The Pacific and the matrix

4.27.22

On the plane to Panama.  The latest Matrix movie is playing on my screen. Planes usually put me in a pensive mood, perhaps it’s a bit of the overview effect of looking out the window that astronauts speak of when seeing the Earth from space. The overview effect combined with the mind-bending nature of The Matrix? Oh yeah.

Tonight, I will be joining one of my best friends, Ted, his wife, Amie, their three kids, Lucy, Scout and Ben, and one other guy named Calder. In a week or so we will set sail for the Marquesas Islands. South of the equator, 3800 nautical miles away. We expect to be at sea for around 25 days or so, depending on our average speed.  No land to stop at. Four adults, three kids, ages 5 to 12. At sea, underway, 24 hours a day. 

I very much look forward to the voyage. Into the unknown! In this day and age where we so often try to keep things controlled, it’s the unknown the draws me.  Or perhaps it’s the unknown in combination with the simplicity of expedition living while also being surrounded by good people. This sort of thing is why I left a great job that I enjoyed – the itch for the unknown and unexplored.

In the latest Matrix movie, Neo is waking up to reality. There are flashes of him 20 years before – he wonders where has the time gone. Which world is real? What is to account for all those months and years? From time to time, I find myself in the grocery store slowly looking around at the people around me thinking, “Don’t they realize that we’re all going to die someday?!” The Matrix is real.

So, I am trying to be more aware of which world I’m in – the real one or the manufactured one, the Matrix. This past week, after a few weeks in the canyons, two flying expeditions and a rocket launch and splashdown, I was thrust back in the Matrix. There were bills to pay, purchases to make, vehicle maintenance to be scheduled, communications to be lined up for the next series of contracts, and date of expirations to check. I felt like “a consumer.” (Do people realize we’re called “consumers?”) In some ways the week was like adding a few lines to the Matrix code so they won’t realize I’m gone. I have a lot of work to do so I can better manage my time in the Matrix. Brother Will and I did have some of our best ping pong rallies ever though and I had some good family time.  The Matrix isn’t all bad. A lot of it is good.

But now to extricate myself for a bit. Back to reality. The reality of being relatively unplugged. We don’t know what will happen.  Twenty-five days is too long for forecasts. There will be calms and storms. Things will break and we will have to fix them or at least come up with a work around or other solution. We will be tested in many ways – some insignificant, and some likely significant. The lower lows and higher highs than in the Matrix.

I’m older than I used to be, just like Neo and his baby-faced former self. But I still have time left. None of know how much time we have. But we’re all alive, at least for right now.  Into the unknown we go.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived… I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” – Henry David Thoreau