Thinking small would make more sense if we started out that way.

Friends of mine recently had their third child. My eldest son lives nearby. He hasn’t seen a newborn in years. What strikes him most about the sweet little girl? Her big eyes and how they soak everything in. When her parents interact with her, she focuses and responds. Otherwise, she calmly receives an uncensored flow of images through her wide eyes. She sees everything. Her possibilities are endless.

What were you going to achieve when you grew up? As a fourteen-year-old, I decided that question at Arcadia Public Library while researching a term paper. Impressed by historical figures who deeply affected their times, I decided there that my life had to mean something. I wasn’t going to live and die without doing something important, something great. Idealistic and chock with juvenile hubris, I decided anyway. Ever since, I’ve been figuring out what truly is important and great and trying to do that. In the process I’ve become more realistic and, I hope, more humble. Strange, the places that kind of voyage takes you.

Strange, too, are the forces you run into once you set your mind to sail. Your intention alone triggers backlash. Once innocuous breezes turn adversarial. Shimmering water reveals battering waves and currents that veer you off course. The rigging always, always resists you. It all seemed easy, watching someone else skipper his own boat. You look for encouragement, and you hope for cooperation and help from those around you. Well meaning, everyone seems to know what’s best for you. No one thinks that “best” lies out across open water. If you chose an unusual destination, you find you’re on your own. Embark on a truly original course? You’re nuts.

About then we ask ourselves if sailing out is a good idea after all. Are we crazy? No one says it, but everyone quietly wonders, even us. It can get to be too much. Our horizons start to shrink, and our envisioned worlds finally implode. Looking back, we euphemize: our “bubbles popped.” That’s funny. They seemed so much more real than bubbles before the implosion. I guess they always do.

Some of us left the sea for shore so long ago, we hardly remember. Now we stand here watching a few crazy sailors, each chasing his bubble over the waves, and we shake our heads. Maybe some day they’ll come to their senses. Land–that’s the ticket! On firm ground, roads stay put. Houses stay put. Merchants stay put. Pretty much everything stays put apart from considerable work to move it. We like it that way. We like moving only when we want and knowing where to find things when we want them. We forget that once we, too, looked out over the water and wondered. What might be out there? What’s it like just being out there?