The gradual, absurd leak of existence

The minute people and sailboats are launched into their respective worlds, the clocks begin ticking. Deterioration begins its relentless march towards our perceived permanence. For our complete lives, we’re locked in a struggle towards the eroding forces of time, nature and entropy—an countless cycle of upkeep and restore—in a futile try to keep away from the murky abyss that awaits.

From the time of launch, existence turns into a bottomless pit into which we throw all our time and assets to forestall us from sinking—into demise as people or into the underside of the ocean as sailboats.

People emerge from the womb as new child ‘vessels,’ hulls pristine and flawless, minds virginal and unjaundiced with the promise of glowing futures. Freshly constructed boats skim by way of the waves—varnished our bodies clean and unblemished, electronics and engines uncorroded—promising huge adventures forward. If solely we knew earlier than the very fact simply how a lot ‘caulking’ the years would require to maintain our ‘ships’ afloat, we in all probability would select to not be born … and positively select to not personal a ship.

In our smug youth, we’re oblivious to the gradual decay that instantly begins consuming away at our foundations. Our tiny toddler our bodies are always engaged on themselves—cells replicating at a livid tempo, repairing microscopic injury earlier than we even discover it, the eroding forces not but seen to the bare eye.

And boats? These first minor scratches and dings a model new boat sustains whereas bobbing in mild harbours are buffed out with proprietorial pleasure and the ravages of the open sea, relying on circumstances which might be after all nonetheless a few years away.

Our bodies and sailboats want an overhaul

However, because the breakdown accelerates, oh how shortly that youthful innocence fades. We quickly turn into disillusioned to the indignities of degradation. Tooth want steel reinforcements from the dentist’s drill. Dermatologists raid our medical insurance and—absent that—our pockets, to laser away blemishes and aberrant growths. Docs try to rebuild our inside equipment by way of invasive exploration and artificial replacements.

What with pacemakers, knee/hip replacements, colostomy baggage and hernia restore mesh, we turn into half-human, half-robot in our determined try to forestall the inevitable. The whole medical business is geared in the direction of patching up our degrading elements with procedures.

As with our our bodies, we haul an getting older boat into dry dock for countless barnacle removing, gel coat restore, refitting and overhaul. Hulls resealed. Engines rebuilt. Picket masts swapped for fiberglass or aluminum. Rigging and sails reknotted and patched. The maintenance by no means ends—a deep, black gap cash pit that requires fixed feeding to keep away from the inevitable inelegant dive to the murky depths.

No matter how a lot effort or cash will get thrown on the drawback, the shedding battle continues. In the future each human physique, like each crusing vessel, will succumb to the cruel pull of disrepair and decay and we’ll return to the mud and primordial waters from which we started.

Laughter will preserve us afloat

However what different selection is there however to seize the day and giggle on the joke of this cosmically bizarre state of affairs we discover ourselves in as deteriorating beings? Certain, we’re extremely superior, self-aware rafts—hell-bent on carrying on towards the inevitabilities. When the going will get powerful and our hulls begin stripping away, we patch up as greatest we are able to, batten down the hatches and stick with it into the sundown.

It could be silly to take these always sinking lives too critically. Our demise is inescapable—properly, at the moment no less than. People’ very existence is a hilarious contradiction of the concept something can endure eternally unchanged—it’s adapt/mend/modify/take away/add-on or die. Our dwelling deserves a hilarious guffaw on the decrepit states all of us ultimately discover ourselves in as we strive each trick within the guide we are able to afford to defy systemic breakdown.

Every new ding, chipped paint or fractured bone? We caulk up once more and crash forth, sails wanting (and generally feeling) tattered and ridiculous sufficient to warrant winks from the universe as we climate ourselves on just a little bit longer.

Human and sailboat lives are these of cussed persistence, diligent preparation and unflinching perseverance by way of life’s storms, as we always modify our ballasts to defy rot and drift just some extra miles throughout the abyss.

We—as more and more decrepit vessels which have pledged to see out our lives on this planet for a considerable period of time—could not make it to the following century, however we’ll chug alongside till the waters or graveyards inevitably declare us. Laughter will preserve us afloat … hopefully.

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picture 1 Lisa Larsen; picture 2: Juda; picture 3: Dimitris Mourousiadis