The Boat

You are on a ship. The size of the ship is not important, just that you are on it, in the middle of the ocean. The only thing visible around you is the diamond like sparkle of water spreading over the horizon in every direction, with the blue of the ocean giving way to the blue of the sky.

One night while you are deep in slumber, you are awakened by the violent lurching and moaning of your vessel. It is sinking, fast, and you need to get into your life raft in order to survive the ordeal. You scramble urgently, trying to grasp everything your mind registers as a necessity to take with you, realizing that you are about to embark on a chilling adventure in a tiny boat that will either last until you are rescued, or the rest of your life.

You, the reader, may or may not have the skill set to get you through this epic into which you have been plunged. You may not even have the mindset to cope with it. But, for this moment, imagine that you are in this situation.

If you could have anyone accompanying you, who would it be? A friend, your spouse, a famous person, a famous dead person, it doesn’t matter; it is your choice for this exercise.

My choice is not my wife, because I would not want her to suffer through this ordeal. Not my children because of the same reason, this would not be a fun adventure. Not a famous person, athlete, or deceased icon.

It would be my father.
I believe he would show calm in the circumstances that we would encounter. He posses certain “emergency engineering” abilities that would be useful in the minimalistic environment we would be in. I believe his attitude would even be as positive as possible. Most of all, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him panic.

I realize that in stressful, uncontrollable situations that there are usually two types of people; those that shut down and those that do not.

Those that shut down become a cancer. They eat away at themselves first, disabling them from making good decisions, especially survival ones, and then begin to eat away at the team, if one is available.

Those that do not shut down enable themselves, as well as others. Their attitudes can be contagious and have the ability to spread like wildfire, bringing cohesion to the team in one survival machine. While one person may not have all of the skill sets needed to be a survival master, the team, as a collective, can help each other, like a community.

All of these positive traits I believe my father posses, and I hope that I posses them as well.
Because in this exercise, while you have been given the choice of whom you would like to be in the boat with you, you still have to be in the boat. And maybe, just maybe, it will be you alone sometime.

Do you want you in the boat with you?