We have been extremely fortunate… we have a wonderfully healthy and exciting son, way too big of a house (there are rooms we haven’t seen for months), great cars, etc… you get the point. Our entire lives we had been told both through media and quite directly by teachers, friends, and even family at times, that we would be happy after we had just a little more money or a slightly larger house. We’ve gone through several iterations of a little more money and a slightly larger house and it isn’t fulfilling. What is fulfilling is our walks on the riverfront at lunch time, watching Carter try to figure out the world, marveling at the sunrises while hunting, talking with friends way too late in the night… life is what is fulfilling, not things.

We recognized this a few years ago but until recently were lost in the quandary of how to maximize life when we needed a constant flow of income to support our lifestyle. Living aboard is a perfect solution to this problem… at least for us. Living aboard will allow us to experience life to the fullest without the constant need for a large stream of income, all while experiencing some of the best sights and most unique people this world has to offer.

Western culture has been drifting away from reality for a while now. I was just over a friend’s house and there were two middle school girls that were good friends and hadn’t seen each other in a while. After the cursory greetings, etc they each whipped out their cellphones and began to text random people and post on their Facebook walls what they had done in the last five seconds since their last post. They then moved to the computer where more such machinations were to follow. Unfortunately it is quite normal for people to go work for 8-9 hours, start dinner, turn on the TV, and tune out of life until bedtime. In 10-20 years (hell, 10-20 days or even hours) will it matter what TV show you watched? What team won the sports game? Who the next idol is? No, it won’t. What will matter is what impact you had on the world. Whom you experienced life with. The time you were able to spend with your children. What difference you made in the lives of people you met. These are things that matter now and forever.

I don’t expect living aboard to solve any of my problems, but I expect it to give me the time to experience life. There are a lot of hardships involved with life on a boat, I get that. I don’t mean to demean the people living in western culture or even the people enjoying it, it’s just that I have found it to beĀ unfulfillingĀ and circular. What is the point of spinning your wheels maxing out yourself so you can buy the next great thing that you will need to replace in six months due to plannedĀ obsolescence? So you can do it all again? No thanks.