Less Is More

Henry David Thoreau once stated that: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." He went on subsequently to say: "In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high."

The Bridgeman is a tool designed by a Navel Architect to cut through vast bodies of Ocean Blue Water and to deliver her Captain and Crew safely to a chosen destination. Every section of her Hull and her Cabin Equipment and her standing and running rigging are all designed to function together with harmony. Each component does its own job. Sheets, halyards, forestays, backstays, turnbuckles, cleats, the Lazarette and blocks and all other components function in harmony. They are the tools and components of a sailboat, which in itself, operates in harmony to the world around her.

Sailboats are like the human body comprised of bone and muscle and all such neurological nerve control systems that make the body perform in accordance with surrounding conditions. They both have capabilities and limitations. They both operate when optimized and balanced to the conditions around them. The human body reacts poorly to Junk Food abuse, and so does a sailboat when all on deck and below fall short of being in 'ship-shape' condition. Excess weight and excess clutter cause deterioration of optimum balance and optimum performance. In the case of a sailboat, I believe it is good to have a few good books on board. The Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer. The Essays by Michael de Montaigne. Shakespeare, Emerson, Spinoza, Herodotus, Marcus Aurelius, Dante, and a handful of other classics to sharpen the mind. There must also be tools, but tools and spare parts that are well studied for functionality and for redundancy when in need. Best to look very close at a sailboat. Best to look at every component of The Bridgeman and count the sum of all her parts. Study them. Draw pictures of them. Measure them and get to know them intimately. Look at the forest and then look at the trees and then look at the root of the tree and even as close as the moss. See how they move. See how they operate. Find out how best to keep every part clean and operational in optimum form.

In the past days I have taken some time to see the Northern Neck of Virginia. Visited the towns of Reedville and Lively and Irvinton and many others. As a friend said, 'they all look like they made it through the Declaration of Independence and the Civil War....but that nothing else has changed with the exception of basic cell phones and digital TV's. Sure, HDTV. (Big Deal). But fundamentally, nothing has changed. Not even Uncle Tom's Cabin.

In Irvington I discovered and old and dilapidated Marina. It looked like a place that had once been very prosperous in its time. More than likely for 50 years. But now it looks like a tornado came through the Marina and blew out all the windows and doors of the buildings and crushed the roofs with all inventory inside. Almost as if one day humans were running a business and the next day spirits and ghosts. Old boats lying in a yard. Old sea-plane and flight simulator equipment. Ghost ships still tied to the docks rotting away. Reels of rigging wire everywhere. Old cranes and shipwright equipment everywhere. File drawers full of paper. All that is left is a story of the former owner in a hospital on 24/7 life support and a resident grounds keeper/watchmen and a few Pit Bulls on chains. At first thought as I walked through what looked like a Dresden/Germany WWII fire bombing was to think about all of the great stuff I could buy at pennies on the dollar. Started to even look at beautiful stainless steel turnbuckles lying on old drums and with the excitement of a pack-rat began to think how they would come in handy. Even started to dream of getting a good deal on the drums of rigging wire. How quickly the glitter of it all sinks into the minds eye and the minds belly. More and more and more. And with it comes more and more and more junk plastic from Wall Mart to store it all. In the end, a desperate act for desperate thinking. Unbalanced thinking. Pure pointless consumerism. All wrapped up in a neat little package of justification. This time it is the sailboat justification package. Formally it was with the Thoroughbred Horse justification package or the fly fishing or the scuba diving or the motorcycle or the bi-plane or tool collecting justification packages. They all come and go like some big crater in the soul. How hard it is on the contrary, to just go back to The Bridgeman and to just look at one turnbuckle and study her anatomy. To take the time to count the inventory of like species of sailboat parts. To see how many parts fit into the bigger part. Or to just be content with what one has and to take the time to get out the stainless steel polish in order to actually polish turnbuckles or cleats or any other existing equipment. Always the same old story. More and more and more. And with it fragmentation and degeneration. Never freedom and never sharpness as in the blade of a wandering Samurai and his sword.

It truth Less is More. Less gives us more. Having less gives us the freedom to spend less time thinking of our own 'miserable' self-generated and self-architected conditions, and more time to actually think about helping others or just being kind to others. To be free to speak nicely and sincerely to another human being at a Super-Market while waiting for a 1/2 pound of Swiss cheese to run through the slicer. To have more time to be connected to the dignity of other people and other creatures around us.

My conclusions are as follows: The Bridgeman must be lean and mean. Lean in the sense of having nothing on board that weighs her down and down into the belly of the sea. Mean in the sense of being a finely tuned tool with her Bow and her Hull and her Rigging all working in unison and in chorus to cut her way through the seas. The Bridgeman must cut through me and with it all of the baggage and drag that I carry throughout the day. Time to dump the stuff overboard in a near-literal sense.

Last night in the middle of the night I could not sleep peacefully and went topside to tie up a halyard that had been blowing in the strong wind and clanging against the main mast. The clouds looked wild and stormy. The wind was tossing everything about as the clouds moved across the sky and the trees blew sway from the wind. It looked like a wild world and like an untamed world as I was trying to imagine what it would be like in the middle of an ocean in such conditions with no one to talk to and no dock plug connecting me to THE MATRIX!

I have certainly started something that I must not forsake. Homer and the other thousands of brave souls have traveled down this road and there is nothing to fear but fear itself. Fear as they say in Dune...is the mind killer. So I say thank you to you Henry David Thoreau for your Walden and Other Writings. PS: And thanks to you Ralph Waldo Emerson for your Essay: Self Reliance and other Writings. PPS: And thank you to my dear friends in Republic/WA and to my new friends at Zion Baptist Church in Lottsburg/VA (Northern Neck/VA).