Greg took a Sailing course in Maine and found new insight
into his fears and his passions on course. The course impacted
him so profoundly that he wrote an article that was printed
in the News & Observer in North Carolina
My greatest fear
What is your greatest fear? It's a classic question in pseudo-deep
group icebreakers, or on a college application. I've always
tried to conjure an answer sufficiently more profound than
spiders or heights. But this summer, through one of the most
amazing experiences of my life, I discovered what I truly
fear most. It was a hot, beautiful July morning in Portland,
Maine, and my stomach was churning. I jumped out of the car
and ran into Target, quickly snagging the cheapest watch I
could find. That afternoon I was to begin my Outward Bound
sailing course, and I had forgotten the packing list's stopwatch
suggestion. This was to be the two weeks I had looked forward
to all summer -- a crash course in sailing on the rocky Maine
coast, minimalist, reflective, back-to-nature living, and
a chance at rejuvenation after a stressful year.
About 2 1/2 hours later, as my Outward Bound instructors were
getting started, the incessant beeping began. For some reason,
my high-quality watch had come with a self-setting alarm,
one that refused to shut off for longer than five-minute intervals.
After stopping the alarm about a dozen times and worrying
that I was making a bad first impression with my future shipmates,
I abandoned the watch with a bag that was to stay on land.
There was something incredibly satisfying about abandoning
that watch. Of course, it was convenient to leave its beeping
behind. Beyond that, it felt satisfying to desert time altogether
for a while. After all, Outward Bound's philosophy is one
of simplicity, I figured, and I would be further simplifying
by making time a distant worry. As someone who checks the
time constantly, I stumbled upon the realization that, for
an intense, reflective, natural expedition, this could be
a distracting habit.
I left land, and I left time (or at least my watch). Five
days later, I met up with the former again. The Outward Bound
sailing crew docked at Hurricane Island off the Maine coast
on an absolutely brilliant day. The rocks along the shoreline
lost their misty mysteriousness and sharpened in the sunlight
as the deep blue waters and green spruces seemed to grow more
intense with each ray of sun.
That night, my isolation from time ended, too. The pure,
clear sunlight yielded to unveiled starlight, and clarity
seemed to cleanse and cascade through my thoughts. Before
that night, I had never seen a shooting star. But I had lain
down only a couple of minutes before a phenomenal one embellished
the sky. I wrote in my journal that it was "like an angel's
wink." Someone mentioned that the stars we were watching,
because they were millions of light years away, might no longer
exist, just their light. This was not new knowledge for me,
but something struck me about it at that moment, as I reflected
on the brilliance of the night sky. These stars, these journals
of time, gave me a new sense of smallness. I am a freckle,
a speck in time. And yet despite the power and vastness of
that sky, I also sensed that every speck matters, that every
speck is a gift.
It hit me when I was walking back to my cabin that night.
Time is my ultimate fear. I fear time because I wish it to
be a bottomless resource, and it is not. Here I am, poised
to enter my senior year of high school, ready to execute the
finale of adolescence, and it's scary to have reached that
point. I have no real regrets, and it's a long life, but 17
years of it are gone. Time is so uncontrollable. I suppose
I just want to know that I am using my speck to the best of
what is possible, that the speck of time issued me was given
to a worthy recipient, and that I am up to the challenge of
accepting the glorious, but, as Robert Penn Warren put it,
"awful responsibility of time." For me, it took
leaving time, abandoning the mental constriction it crafts
around me, to realize how much I fear it.
The next morning on Hurricane Island, one of my instructors
read a quote by Jane Rule, which claimed that "fear is
desire." Suddenly, the idea spun my anxiety at a different
angle. It gave me faith that my fear of time is only evidence
of my desire to do right by it. Indeed, my hope is that I
can live with the constraint of time, and even more, cherish
it.
