Spirit is adventure

“Spirit is adventure,” my son wrote when he saw her launch.

In Dutch, the word spirit also means soul.

Adventure feeds the soul. And the soul drives us toward adventure.

Why is a heap of steel and wood more than a heap of steel and wood?
Why does an old Citroën DS live on in memory, the “Goddess” to some, the strijkijzer where I grew up, and not simply as a car?

Do we give it a soul, or does it give us one? Where does that soul reside?
Could it lie in the tinkering, in the careful work of keeping something that needs care not only alive, but shining again?

Working together, searching, struggling and fixing things gives meaning and pleasure. Perhaps precisely because nothing comes by itself. Because something requires care. Because something offers resistance. Because there is something to be made. That is perhaps where a thing acquires a soul.

Homo faber becomes homo ludens. The working human becomes a playing human. And that play keeps us young, not only in our minds but also in our bodies. It is that contagious energy, that joy of play, that brings us together.

In sailing, many things come together for me. The vita activa meets the vita contemplativa. The stinging rain on our cheeks brings warmth to the conversations. The burning sun on our faces leaves a glow in our memories.

Sailing brings slowness. Brings constraint. And through that, depth.

Spirit is not the adventure.

We are the adventure.