Test
I can't explain how exactly I ended up in this situation, so I'll simply describe it as I remember it.
I had been at the Steinbrygga båthavn, helping a guy and his girlfriend to raise the mast on their small sailing boat. After we finishing that and some other small tasks on the boat we had smoked a strong hash joint and were now heading back to the dock.
I was fascinated how swiftly the boat moved over the water. Only using thrust to accelerate and then idling the engine we were slowly maneuvering between the other boats, careful not to bump into any of them.
When we arrived at the dock, we had to turn the boat by 90° to get inside. This was a surprisingly weird maneuver to me. Maybe because I had never thought about its necessity before.
The feeling of finally very slowly sliding straight into that way too big slot just made me laugh inside.
Then we had to tie the boat to the pier and I had no idea how to do that.
Finally I was kneeling on the tip of of the boat, one rope in my left hand and, with the help of a smaller rope, another one coming towards me from the right side.
I was a little bit concerned to not fall into the cold water, but mostly about dropping a rope because that would just have been a nasty complication.
The wind was blowing into my face and pushed the boat backwards, increasing the tension on the two ropes. Had the boat drifted too far, I would have been unable to keep holding on to both.
Luckily I could use the thin helping rope from the front to pull the boat forward. Now I could really feel the inertia of the 1.7 tons of the boat cutting into my hand.
In the moment when I held both ropes in both hands I felt like the job was almost done. But I still needed to get the snap hook and attach it to both ropes and then to the boat.
While pulling in the snap hook on the thin rope, I was mostly concerned not to drop one of the big ropes or the hook into the water, but the overall feeling was threatening.
First I wound the loop only around the left rope, but I needed to wind it around both. When I finally got both ropes together, attach the snap hook to them and simply click it into the attachment point on the boat, it was a huge relief.
It had all seemed like such an impossible task, but in the end it really worked. Getting my bike off the boat was another challenge, but coming down was not difficult at all.
When I got off the boat and looked at its tip from the front, my perspective literally changed. Kneeling there the boat had felt so big, the water so deep and dark and dangerous, but now from the outside it suddenly seemed so small, so usual. Probably because that's the perspective I'm used to.
The whole action had somehow felt like a test for me. I assumed that my help in fastening the boat had not been necessary, so the delegation of this nearly impossible task to me could have either been a way to avoid the nasty part of the work or a sort of test for me, a small task to train my coordination and to get me into a slightly uncomfortable situation.
One reason I pushed through this “test” was the advice my grandfather gave me for my travel: always be open.
I guess I should keep that attitude that brought me into this situation.
After all, I've realized that some of the best moments, the best feelings in my life, have been preceded by rather threatening, humbling, or frustrating experiences.
Even when I feel that vast emptiness inside of me, I know that this is a force that is useful for me, that it is the stretching of the catapult that sends me somewhere completely different.