It's beautiful out there, it really is. Green fields full of harvest, open country roads, sandy dunes, and an entire border of blue-green waters that make up Lake Michigan.
I always come back from those trips with a question I can't shake, like feeling a need to stretch from within me, as I try to dig into what Success really means to me. In 30 short minutes of cruising down the coastline, we pass hundreds of millions of dollars of beachfront properties. Some are gorgeous. Some are simply there, huts on beach, and that's enough for them.
We pass by gigantic towers of boats and yachts as we putter out beyond the No Wake zone in the harbor. It's got to be a ridiculous industry, whoever gets to invent new fish tracker and boat-finder tech that goes on the tops of those floating behemoths. The more niche problem they can solve with their technologies, the better those rich old men feel superior to their fellow man.
There is something about the lake that acts as an equalizer, though. Even the wealthiest of people I see on their boats, there's a brotherly nod, an even wave, an agreement that we're all taking part of something greater than us, no matter how much money you have to saddle it down into a more convenient shape. There's a wisdom in being in nature, no matter who you are, you're playing by Gaia's rules.
Money abounds out there, but that's just the surface level of what this world displays. It's a pace of living, it's an example of an end goal that I try to see if it fits into my oddly-shaped peg of personal fulfillment. Hard to say from the window on whether that showcase would work. I think that's why I usually prefer cities. There's no threat of this peace of calm and pace of life to sink into my thoughts and rattle my running pace in the rat race.
I leave with a sense of doubt, of unsureness as to what I'm actually after in life. Is it a house on a beach? A big boat, land to call my own? Michigan is what they're calling a Haven State once the world truly turns to flame come the climate crisis. Is that what I want for myself, to bunker down and live a life that I'll have to learn how to lean into? Boating and fishing, breathing pure natural air, hikes on any weekend, being actually, personally proud of the effort I put into a lawn? Do I even care about what I own, or just what I've done in this trip around the sun?
It's an ever-elusive answer, I find, and as I leave, I do so with a lot more question than answer.
That, and feeling as though I'm still on the waves, with my senses rocking back and forth.
