11/13/14

A young fish is swimming along one day when he bumps into an older fish swimming the other way. “Great day to be in the water,” the older fish says. The younger fish stops. He replies, “What the hell is water?”

Here we are, on our 90^th day of ECOEE, still going through the same motions. Being woken up by the sun, returning to the back country kitchen, wiping the sand out of our underwear and hopping into a boat to our next destination. Nothing new. Like water to a fish. We can still bicker and argue about the tedious and the obvious; that none of this is new news. “We do this every DAY people!” “Why is packing up a boat so hard for you?!” “What do you not understand about no sand in my food?!?” We have gone through all the same motions, made all the same mistakes, been given all the same feedback. Some feedback, given 4 or 5 times even, still has yet to sink in. Well, what do we do about it? Some may take it to heart, to roll around in their head until they cannot stand it any longer, others take it, spit on it, and throw it to the ground. Just learn to accept it, they say, or learn to grow from it, they say… Why let it bother you? After all, it’s just feedback anyway.

We tend to forget the obvious things in our lives. We often forget that we are all hurting in the same ways, or that we are all physically strained and emotionally drained from the condition of this expedition. We forget that we are all breathing the same air. We are all people with feelings and people with pain; that the person right next to you is just a person, they shouldn’t make you nervous.

So we all have a choice. We can choose to give meaning to our lives, or to step back and let life make all our decisions for us. Tati said to me today something along the lines of this; “ A person does not ever realize when a fish is drinking water.” Has a fish like the last quote, but with a little different meaning. You can never tell if a fish is a happy fish or a sad fish. We just see this cute little fish and decide that he’s happy. We give meaning to his meaningless little fish life. If we take life with a happy heart, how can we wrong ourselves? There are so many distractions and opportunities for negativity that we need to be of constant reminders to ourselves that we do not want the easy way out of life. We are here for the simple challenge of it. We are here, and are going to continue being here. This is our water to swim in how we please.

Cassidy Depoy