The minute humans and sailboats are launched into their respective worlds, the clocks start ticking. Deterioration begins its relentless march against our perceived permanence. For our entire lives, we are locked in a war against the eroding forces of time, nature and entropy—an endless cycle of maintenance and repair—in a futile attempt to avoid the murky abyss that awaits.
From the time of launch, existence becomes a bottomless pit into which we throw all our time and resources to prevent us from sinking—into death as humans or into the bottom of the ocean as sailboats.
Humans emerge from the womb as newborn ‘vessels,’ hulls pristine and flawless, minds virginal and unjaundiced with the promise of glowing futures. Freshly built boats skim through the waves—varnished bodies smooth and unblemished, electronics and engines uncorroded—promising vast adventures ahead. If only we knew before the fact just how much ‘caulking’ the years would require to keep our ‘ships’ afloat, we probably would choose not to be born … and definitely choose not to own a boat.
In our arrogant youth, we are oblivious to the slow decay that immediately begins eating away at our foundations. Our tiny infant bodies are constantly working on themselves—cells replicating at a furious pace, repairing microscopic damage before we even notice it, the eroding forces not yet visible to the naked eye.
And boats? Those first minor scratches and dings a brand new boat sustains while bobbing in gentle harbours are buffed out with proprietorial joy and the ravages of the open sea, depending on circumstances that are of course still many years away.
Bodies and sailboats need an overhaul
But, as the breakdown accelerates, oh how quickly that youthful innocence fades. We soon become disillusioned to the indignities of deterioration. Teeth need metal reinforcements from the dentist’s drill. Dermatologists raid our health insurance and—absent that—our pockets, to laser away blemishes and aberrant growths. Doctors attempt to rebuild our interior machinery through invasive exploration and synthetic replacements.
What with pacemakers, knee/hip replacements, colostomy bags and hernia repair mesh, we become half-human, half-robot in our desperate attempt to prevent the inevitable. The entire medical industry is geared towards patching up our degrading parts with procedures.
As with our bodies, we haul an aging boat into dry dock for endless barnacle removal, gel coat repair, refitting and overhaul. Hulls resealed. Engines rebuilt. Wooden masts swapped for fiberglass or aluminum. Rigging and sails reknotted and patched. The upkeep never ends—a deep, black hole money pit that requires constant feeding to avoid the inevitable inelegant dive to the murky depths.
Regardless of how much effort or money gets thrown at the problem, the losing fight continues. One day every human body, like every sailing vessel, will succumb to the merciless pull of disrepair and decay and we’ll return to the dust and primordial waters from which we began.
Laughter will keep us afloat
But what other choice is there but to seize the day and laugh at the joke of this cosmically weird situation we find ourselves in as deteriorating beings? Sure, we are incredibly advanced, self-aware rafts—hell-bent on carrying on against the inevitabilities. When the going gets tough and our hulls start stripping away, we patch up as best we can, batten down the hatches and carry on into the sunset.
It would be foolish to take these constantly sinking lives too seriously. Our demise is inescapable—well, currently at least. Humans’ very existence is a hilarious contradiction of the idea that anything can endure forever unchanged—it’s adapt/mend/adjust/remove/add-on or die. Our living deserves a hilarious guffaw at the decrepit states we all eventually find ourselves in as we try every trick in the book we can afford to defy systemic breakdown.
Each new ding, chipped paint or fractured bone? We caulk up again and crash forth, sails looking (and sometimes feeling) tattered and ridiculous enough to warrant winks from the universe as we weather ourselves on a little bit longer.
Human and sailboat lives are those of stubborn persistence, diligent preparation and unflinching perseverance through life’s storms, as we constantly adjust our ballasts to defy rot and drift just a few more miles across the abyss.
We—as increasingly decrepit vessels that have pledged to see out our lives on this planet for a substantial amount of time—may not make it to the next century, but we’ll chug along until the waters or graveyards inevitably claim us. Laughter will keep us afloat … hopefully.
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image 1 Lisa Larsen; image 2: Juda; image 3: Dimitris Mourousiadis
