My father was a family man, business owner, and accomplished offshore sailor and racer during the corinthian age of singlehanded sailing. As a teenager, I was lucky to join him to put many thousands of miles under a keel during races and deliveries.
Today, I’m lucky to have some memoranda to carry with me on my offshore ventures so he can join me in my travels: binoculars, a hand bearing compass, dividers, a sextant. But the most valuable to me is a framed excerpt from Alfred Tennyson’s poem Ulysses:
Come, my friends,
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
So it is that sons try to measure up to their fathers and their own potential. So they may be at ease with themselves. So they can be satisfied with how they lived their lives. So they can hold their heads up when they join their forebears in the afterlife.
I am at peace while I continue to seek, to find and not to yield.
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