weblog april 2020 further ponderings

We tie knots. Hundreds of ropes need countless sailors’ knots. The shipneeds them to keep the sails and rig taut. Here, out at sea, we tieourselves to sailing the ship across the oceans. We also need them notto lose a foothold on our lives. We tie knots amongst each other, nowpulled tighter to make the government imposed isolation to prevent theviral spread more manageable. Where many of our politicalrepresentatives and their rule don’t reach, worldwide it seems likeindividuals, bound together by a common goal, are achieving cooperativeresults to make the situation more tolerable for all. In times ofdifficulty, private initiatives seem to work to make closer ties amongsteach other.The sharp bend in the course of our modern history, produced orcatalysed by the COVID-19 pandemic, has eased or in cases, evenunfastened the knots that we were so sure were strongly lacing up ourfutures and ourselves to its path. Now, one way or another, it shows itsunpredictable heading. Some knots will have to be tightened; some ofthem may require a new approach.For many, having lost foothold with life and the diversity ofexperiences the planet offers, this future is strongly tied to oureconomy and the evolution of our countries, to a senseless ever growingspiral. Some of its twists may have gone loose now, offering a turningpoint for renewed stories, new opportunities to see and understand theworld we live in, new ways of fastening the knots.There is something called ´the economy´ which is supposed to growconstantly, although it is never completely clear just what is growingor to what purpose. Because when you analyse it, you see that it largelyconsists of bankers, stockbrokers, lawyers and other speculators orallypleasuring each other all day. People have no idea what it is that keepson growing, yet they spend all their time worrying whether the rate ofgrowing is faster or slower than they suppose it should be. And then allof a sudden they find everything has gone pear-shaped, and a period ofnational mourning is decreed for the whole country.What people are actually producing is something the nature of which theycompletely fail to understand despite spending all day every daythinking about it to the exclusion of everything else.Victor Pelevin. ´Empire V’ The Prince of HamletSudden turns, unexpected events requiring flexibility and adaptationkeep stubbornly appearing in the path of our lives, and in a way, thatis the hidden beauty of it. We can choose to ignore them, we can chooseto focus our minds on a single drop of water in the immensity of theoceans or try to have a more global vision, we can choose to face thenew challenges together, or we can choose to deal with them individually.There’s countless ways to it, but in the end, in a large society, in asmall community, on a sailing ship in the middle of the ocean, or assingle individuals, we all have to wilfully brave the new challenges.I wish to live deliberately and face only the essential facts of life,and learn what it has to teach and not, when it comes time to die,discover that I had not lived. Henry David Thoreau. ´Walden´Here we are far from the mass media broadcasting, news, television,radio or internet, despite the modern technologies available for ships,we chose to minimize their application on board, and keep our old ladyEuropa as close to a traditional Tall Ship as we can in these moderntimes, sailing classical routes across the world’s oceans. Our smallsociety on board lacks many fashionable amenities, easily accessiblewhilst ashore, but there is a gain on direct contact with the smallgroup of people sailing the ship, with the seemingly endless sea, itsinhabitants, the winds and weather systems. And with it, breathe on thefundamental ingredients that keep us alive and the ship sailing.The world now has been forced to go through a phase of understanding andperception of change. We are becoming aware of alterations in ourregular lives that have taken us aback. What might be necessary tofollow is a change of perception about our modern society, our path tofollow, our ways of dealing with sudden issues, the processes to getmore acquainted with the planet we live in. And in between all this,also the ways of seeing and listening, a way to approach the lands andseas that would allow them to open to us, instead of forcing our way in.In these times when it looks like countless are re-discovering theuntamed spaces of this planet, we realize that this wilderness isindispensable, opening new challenges to balance the human curiosityabout them, with the ever soaring business and economics, and with theirpreservation.The tourism industry we are a part of, also entangled in the curls of aseemingly ever-growing economic trend, has been struck hard during thelast months. That affects each one of us in different ways. Theincreasing number of COVID-19 affected seem to overwhelm all thenations; population confinement, quarantine, restricted travellingchances, cancellation of planned voyages, blockage of whole countriesand ports, has pushed Europa to sail to her homeport, letting her, andwith her all the enthusiastic crew on board, to enjoy a good stretch ofthe Atlantic Ocean, enduring its changeable sea states, weather and winds.There is story in that, not for the fact on its own of sailing the ship,or the bravery of her crew, but mainly for the moment in our lives andthe historical framing of when and why the Europa set sail for the longdistance between Ushuaia and Netherlands.Jordi