Shortly after I sent around this blog address to a few friends and family members, my sister-in-law Brenda wrote to ask me why I called it an experiment and not an adventure. Since I pride myself on my nearly inexhaustible sense of optimism, I've been ruminating on that one for some time, and I think I finally know the answer. So here it is, Bren: An experiment either is or isn't, it happens or it doesn't. There is no gray area, no subjectivity of thought muddled by optimism or pessimism. Simply put, whether or not my family's experience here is an adventure is matter of interpretation, and as we all know, interpretation is subject to the vagaries of mood, bias, sobriety, character flaws and such.
Perhaps it was my situational pessimism that led me to call it an experiment and not an adventure. Sure, on a day-to-day basis, I'm full of hope and light. There isn't much I think I can't do or figure out how to do. And I'm more likely to see the opportunities around me than not. But every so often, there's a situation that pokes a giant hole in my reservoir of optimism. Sometimes it's a pebble in my shoe that does it; sometimes it's Mt. Everest. Either way, I become completely overwhelmed and pessimistic. It's not a pretty sight, but it generally blows through like a summer storm, fast and violent but blessedly short. I've coined a phrase for it. I call myself an operational optimist and a situational pessimist.
Assuming I'm sufficiently self-aware (at least on this topic!), John then is the yin to my yang. He is, by his own admission, much more likely to find the rain cloud on the idea horizon, more attuned to what can -- or likely will! -- go wrong than I am. Operational pessimist, situational optimist. As with me, though, his perspective gets upended from time to time, and he comes through with brilliant, hopeful optimism. Thankfully, it always seems to be just when I'm running low on it.
In our nearly quarter-century ride together, John and I have talked often and at length about our different perspectives. And here's the real truth of the matter: to make a life like this work, you need both. You need the operational optimist to get you away from the dock -- but you need the operational pessimist to make sure you live long enough to get back to it! While I'm busy thinking about how to make the boat more liveable, John is focused on keeping it, and us, on the right side of the water.
This was brought home again a couple days ago, when we were invited out to watch races for the sailing club we belong to down here. We loaded cooler, life jackets and kids onto a wide, flat vessel that was originally used for lobstering but now serves as the club's race committee boat. The kids took up positions along the squared off bow as we zipped across the shallow, lukewarm water of the seaplane basin on the Gulf side of Key West.
John and I found chairs aft of the helm (behind the steering wheel) and settled in to await further instructions. After about 15 minutes, Captain Ed, a white-haired, open-shirted 70-year-old with his hand perpetually wrapped around a beer, turned to John and said, "My feet are getting wet. See if the plugs are in." As John did a perimeter sweep, he found and replaced three drain plugs that had been left out of their intended holes at the water line and a bilge pump that wasn't working, a combination known to sink many a boat. Were we sinking? I guess that depends on your interpretation. My husband would say yes, and technically, I suppose I would have to agree that's true. But from my perspective, we were simply taking on a little water. It was a good lesson for both of us. For me, I realized that I needed to be more attuned to what could -- and may at that very moment -- be going wrong. John, on the other hand, realized that the calamity of inattention doesn't always result in death. Seeing your flip flops float by you inside the boat might be cause for alarm, except that our captain wasn't concerned and a few drain plugs and a whack or two on the bilge pump kept the sea at bay.
A couple years ago, while hosting his buddies for a guy's sailing weekend, John had a similar experience aboard our boat, but because he was the captain of this ship, his sense of alarm was far greater. Motoring out of the channel, he noted that the bilge pump had cycled on-and-off several times. That's unusual because our boat is dry as boats go, and unless we've stocked the on board cooler with ice, no more than a couple inches of water accumulates in the dank channel that runs under the cabin sole (floor), not enough to trip the automatic siphon on the pump. The cause, he found, was cracked cockpit drains that allowed sea water to gush into the boat as the bow came up under power and the transom was pushed down. Sinking? Technically. But a sailor friend aboard didn't see immediate cause for alarm. As long as the bilge pump kept cycling, the sail could continue for a bit, and that's what they did.
At this point, I'm sure John ran the mental checklist -- were the batteries sufficiently charged to keep the pump running? How much would the boat have to slow to keep the cockpit drains above the water line? Should the life jackets be brought out just in case? Good questions, all. Had I been aboard that day, I may not have noticed the bilge water pouring into the back of the cockpit, much less run the contingencies in my head. I likely would have accepted our friend's verdict without a second thought, just as I had noted the water on my feet in the committee boat and had simply accepted it as normal rather than a sign of something that needed to be fixed.
My point, as you probably can see, is that you need operational pessimism to see the threats that lie just outside the consciousness of the blindly optimistic. And you need operational optimism to temper debilitating pessimism just enough to get you off the dock. It's a balance we've worked to find in our life on land, but it's one we've truly come to treasure on board.
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