Off Course

I was on a trip this year. I spent days and weeks and months on a boat I built myself, a wooden one with a big white sail, already worn out by the wind and the water. Above me were the seagulls and the sun, beneath me the hidden treasures in the ocean. And in between there was me, a girl that kept her head in the clouds all of the time, dreaming of the island where she would arrive soon. Inside my mind I pictured my life. I saw it all in front of my eyes and the excitement to arrive at this wondrous place filled me up the closer it came. I was nearly there, I could nearly see the palm trees and the white sand in the distance while the birds began to sing their welcome songs to me and the dolphins jumped through the waves to lead me.

But some things are not meant to be. Suddenly the flawless blue sky turned grey, then black. The clouds were so big and tight that they seemed to weigh me down. I felt how the air around me became thinner and then thicker when the first flashes enlightened the horizon. The dolphins and the birds were gone, and now the soothing rushing of the waves was nothing more than an ear-battering crushing. They hit my boat in sync with the hard rain and the first thunder and sweeped me over the railing.

The water was freezing and when I disappeared into the navy blue waves, dark swirls tried to pull me deeper, tried to make it impossible to escape.

I fought for my life. My lungs felt like they would explode, around me only water and cold chilling me to the bone. I thought that this might be the end. I felt weak and didn't know how to save myself because I couldn't even see the sky anymore, couldn't see anything anymore. I was barely able to move because the power of the ocean kept pushing me back and forth, up and down into the darkest places one would ever see.

But only seconds before I completely lost consciousness, something pulled me out of the water. 

I saw the surface coming closer, and suddenly air filled my lungs. The sky above me turned light blue and the sea began to calm down. I didn't know what happened, I didn't know what threw me off my boat and what took me back above the waves. My boat was gone, for sure. And the island was out of sight, too far to reach, somewhere between East and West.

So I started swimming and floating through the sea. The animals around me came back and when the first streams of sunlight fell on my body, I noticed a small island in front of me. It had  some hills and palm trees and a little bay. It didn't look like the one I was looking for, like the one I was headed to before the storm, but it was there, close, waiting for me.

Right now I am swimming torwards this other island. The storm is over, and eventhough it took my boat and ripped my map, I can see clearly now that it's gone.

That island could be the place I am meant to be. Off course, away from the island of my dreams, I just keep swimming torwards it. And the closer I come, the more stoked I am to arrive there. Because maybe the places we dream of in first hand aren't made for us. Maybe we have to get lost to be found again. 

And maybe, just maybe, there is something even bigger ahead than we ever dreamt of.