The Sculptor Within

An immense task no doubt, rowing solo across the Pacific Ocean. I wasn’t expecting it to be all sunshine and rainbows out there, and it certainly wasn’t. However, what I didn’t expect, what nobody had warned me about, was just how hard things would be back ashore, how hard it would be to come to grips with the outside world. So, what was it out there that changed me, that made me question it all and struggle to cope with society?

As far as unique experiences go, mine must be up there somewhere. For 160 days I lived in almost complete isolation, cut off from the world, denying myself every luxury, and on top of that, having to work painfully hard each and every day, just to survive. All this changed in the space of an afternoon. I was thrust headlong into a small and remote Polynesian village in the peak of their festive and cultural season. It all seems a bit eccentric now, nonetheless it was a deeply insightful and thought provoking experience; one that had me questioning just about every facet of the three different lives I have lived. My life as a motivated and ambitious young man - working hard, playing hard and delighting in a busy schedule. My life as a hermit at sea. And my new life on an idyllic South Pacific atoll.

Now, I would not recommend rowing the Pacific to the reader at home, it really can be as awful as one would imagine, but, as I’m sure you know, such a mighty task must reap benefits of some sort. The greater the challenge, the greater the reward. Fortune favours the brave. And on it goes. So, what does one get out of such an immense experience? Well, I came to understand that each stroke out there was not just a minuscule step in the right direction, a few feet closer to safety, home, friends, family and a world of opportunities. No. Each stroke was a blow to the chisel, a chink in the stone, a small but purposeful action that led to the creation of a spiritual sculpture within that would have seemed unfathomable beforehand.

We’re all chipping away: Whether we realise it or not, our soul is constantly being sculpted by our environment and actions. Life is our muse - love, loss, birth, death - without these our sculpture would be crude, in its infancy; we need these experiences - good and bad - to inspire the subconscious sculptor within. Many of us want more: We believe the road to wisdom lies in a trip to India, a tour of The Continent, a visit to the New World; we go looking for new experiences, new outlooks, new ways of life; hoping to shape our sculpture. We fail, however, to look within, to understand that it is not new experiences that will lead to wisdom, it is the opportunity to look deep inside, to explore everything we already know. Only then can we truly learn something new and forge our own path on the road to oneness.

How many of us have read the same book twice? It has been said before, and I wholeheartedly agree, that if it’s worth reading, it’s worth reading twice. There is so much more to be gained, so much juice left to squeeze, marrow to suck. Life is no different. A busy and interesting day need not be followed by another, and another; in fact it is unwise to do so. Time must be taken out, preferably alone, to savour what has been, to take stock of every moment.

Time alone is not just time well spent, it is an essential to gaining a clearer understanding of what life really is. I will not suggest we all go and live as hermits - as good as it may be - but we must take time, for ourselves and for humanity. The level of interaction we have grown so accustomed to, especially in the new millennium, seems to me to be a perversion of the natural course, a surefire way to dull an edge. How can we possibly sculpt with such blunt tools? We must be alone, or in the company of few, away from life’s distractions, if we want to hone our point and leave the sculptor be. This is when the magic happens.

I was at sea for five months. After a week on terra firma it hit me: I felt as if I had aged five years, but not physically; I did not ache, I did not feel weary, in fact I felt uplifted, enlightened. I had understood things, trawled through the past, the present and the future, worked out what made me smile, what made me frown, what was important, and what was not. The sculptor had been working away, and for the first time, I was able to step back and admire the work.

I craved almost nothing at sea. I wanted more books, I wanted more of Thoreau, but that was a small matter. When I really thought hard about it, which I often did, there was nothing I genuinely needed or wanted, it continuously amazed me. I kept thinking, “Soon I’ll tire of this or that”, “What am I going to start missing?”, I was all anticipation. But, to my surprise, things began to drift the other way. To my utter dismay, I found myself simplifying my already spartan existence, an existence that was borderline ascetic. 

My cabin was no bigger than a closet, and to get into this space I had to twist my way through a hatch no bigger than a manhole. Inside I could sit up, or lie down, nothing more. My bunk was small and cramped, often filled with supplies. My only other space was the cockpit, a wet and unstable deck with only one seating option, a shaped cedar board with a thin layer of foam, resting on four wheels that made sure it never stayed stationary. Even standing up was something of a treat for me. This relatively simple task, as well as every other movement onboard, was made difficult by the fact that the boat was rocking, always rocking. It meant that every position I was in required the constant flexing of muscles. The simple task of standing up was akin to riding a skateboard, and even sitting on my bunk was like riding a bus down a bumpy, winding road. Then there was the rowing; for 8-12 hours every day I pulled on those oars, straining from sun up to sun down, without reprieve. I could not go for a walk, talk to a friend, or even relax. I was trapped in a tiny floating capsule thousands of miles from land; 6.5mm of timber separated me from an alien environment where survival was impossible. My entire existence was refined to a space no bigger than a cubicle. Yet this was a space I chose for myself, it was by my own design.

This was not a vessel that had been drawn by a computer, built in a factory and sold to me by a salesman. No. This craft of mine was as much a reflection of me as the journey itself. I began with a block of cedar, a mallet, a chisel and a plane. I was going to make a model. I stood at the bench, grasped my chisel in one hand, the mallet in the other, took a deep breath, and began to shape my vessel. I did not overthink, I did not look too closely, I let the mind and hand become one, I let the sculptor within take control. Eventually the shape was just right, she was a whaleboat through and through, modeled precisely on those intrepid craft that plied the waters of the Pacific under oar, two hundred years before my very own whaleboat began to germinate within my mind. With a model ready to measure and study, I sat down with pencil and paper, a ruler and spline, and began to draw my boat, subtly tweaking as I went. First the hull lines, then the deck plan, the general arrangement and construction details. All the while the sculptor within was guiding my pencil. There's a reason the hull was drawn fine, the cabin was small, and creature comforts were hardly considered. It all made for a better sea boat, and deep down I knew, sitting at that desk, the sculptor within approved, he could see there was nothing more than that which was absolutely necessary, she was fit for purpose in every sense of the word.

Going back to the sea. I won’t mention the thirst, the heat, the relentless sun, the mind bending currents. One day I will write about them, but not yet. There was no way to escape, it was all a constant, forever testing me, torturing me.

And what happened? What was the result of this torture? I did not go mad. I did not crave. I did not want. I never felt like giving up. No. It was quite the opposite. I relished every moment. I thrived off the hardship. I grew from the hardship. I learnt and I understood. The universe was put into perspective.

My diet was simple to the extreme. I ate huge amounts of food, but it never varied. For breakfast I had oats with dried apricot, lunch was wraps with peanut butter, dinner was either fish or a dehydrated meal, snacks were biscuits and nuts, as well as a bottle of vitamin C tablets to ward off the scurvy. I was nervous about this before I left. “How would I manage on such a mundane diet, the same thing, every, single, day?” For this reason I packed a whole compartment full of treats; sweet and savory snacks to keep things interesting in a world I had been warned would be devoid of interest. It was 70 days before I opened that compartment, more out of curiosity than anything else. One day I woke up and it dawned on me, there was no issue at all with such a simple diet. In fact, I realised that I had been subconsciously simplifying it even further; it had been weeks since I had had a chocolate biscuit. I was paring away my already severe existence to its limits. Why was this so? At first it seemed odd, I had the option to diversify my diet - they say that variety is the spice of life - yet I chose not to. Then I realised, it was the sculptor within, he was relishing the simplicity, the chance to work uninterrupted. Any sort of complexity at all was just a distraction from the hammering and chipping, the shaping and defining of lines. Much of life is really just a distraction from the real work to be done.

I adore music; there is no way more powerful and evocative to transport one's emotions. In my former life I relished concerts and gigs, even a solo busker could really stir me. I have the most fantastic memories of hazy, energetic, wild, punk rock gigs: a room full of misfits in a state of ecstasy. These were good times. But I left that all behind. I wondered how I would cope. In the beginning of my journey I missed music a little. I thought about the hundreds of songs I had collected over the years, and I often fantasised about the first time I would hear a song again, how good it would be, how wonderful I would feel. After almost six months of extraneous silence, it finally happened. I had been on land for a week, it was time to sit down, watch the sun set and put on my playlist. And there I sat, absolutely horrified. I could not do it. It was like someone running their fingernails down a chalkboard. Just about everything I had once listened to was ruined for me. The sculptor within was crying out. “I cannot work like this!” 

Men and women alike would often hint at it, others were less subtle. “A young man like yourself, out there all alone for so long; I sure know what I’d be thinking about…” I had an inkling that this was a desire only felt in the company of others, that free from temptation there would be little to bother me. I discovered that I was right, it was easy out there. Life was simple and uncomplicated. But, of course, it all changed one afternoon. I had been on land for about a week, instead of looking out the window, or going for a walk, I was perusing social media, a repetitious motion with my right thumb, catching up on photographs of the lives of my friends, it was as mind numbing as you would expect. And then I stopped, unable to continue any further. I was taken aback by a photo, a photo of a woman. I had never before met her, but we had been in contact often during my stay in her native Peru. She was a beautiful, intelligent and passionate type. But this was no ordinary picture, it was designed specifically to arouse and entice. I was, once again, horrified. I got up from my desk and began to pace back and forth. I did not know how to feel, what to feel, I was ruined. It dawned on me that I would have to, one day, fully re-integrate into a world driven by our selfish quest to find a partner, to mate. A world of advertising, lax taboos, flirting, texting, eyeing off, and being eyed off. It was all too much. In a second I vowed to live alone forever, maybe join the church, or just keep rowing. 

I have spoken about my diet, how wonderfully simple it was. I therefore harboured no fears about life on a South Pacific atoll. Living off fish, rice and tinned beef. I was shocked then, one morning, when I was handed yet another big, warm bowl of tinned beef and rice for breakfast. I did, just for a second, ever so slightly dreaded the thought of yet another mundane meal. How could this be so after what I had just been through? “You fool Tom, of course!” “Are your new friends spending all their days communicating with the far reaches of the globe; video conferences, website editing, planning ahead?” Of course not. They’re living wholesome, simple, good lives, one day at a time. No wonder they eat the same thing, day in and day out, with a smile, just like I used to. My satisfaction from a meal is inversely proportionate to the number of emails I do.

It was Christmas Day in Australia, I would have to wait another two days before Christmas was celebrated on Penrhyn Island. I was at my desk, as usual, when an email came in from an aunt, it was a picture of my dear family. They were seated casually, enjoying a Christmas day drink. They were outfitted very nicely, my parents both wore stylish spectacles, my sisters were dressed modestly but fashionably. They were all holding perfect clear glasses with different coloured liquids, all smiles, makeup and cheer. If it were any other year I would have been smiling alongside them in that photo. But this year was different. My heart churned. I was ever so happy to see my family happy, but on the other hand I was shocked, the whole scene seemed so futile, so deliberately yet unnecessarily lavish. I winced, “What was the meaning of all this luxury?” I winced again knowing that I would eventually return and that I would very quickly, and perhaps gladly, re-assimilate back into the lifestyle that I had once known, the one that now I could hardly bear to witness.

The slow re-integration continues to be shocking. I must note, however, that it was almost all a result of my connection to the outside world via the internet. In truth, nothing on Penrhyn offends me. I just feel so grateful that I didn’t end up somewhere bigger, somewhere more developed; that I was able to find a place that would not upset the sculptor.

Life is a spiral, and we can choose which way to follow it. If we choose to simplify, everything is easy, we begin to work our way inwards, to that elusive centre, where the sculptor lies. Where beauty lies. Where we can truly be one with ourselves and the universe. If however, we make no effort to simplify, then we have no choice but to ride the spiral upwards and outwards, further and further away from the centre, gradually getting faster and faster as we revolve around ever increasing radii, to the dizzying heights of complexity and accumulation. The finest food, a new car, two cars, a big house, overseas holidays, new clothes, constant connection —- the more we acquire the more we desire —- forever taking us further away from the centre within. We must turn around, aim in the other direction, and start descending to simplicity, to contentment, to oneness.

I always knew I wanted this to be an ascetic experience. There’s a reason I didn't want to take any music or audiobooks, why I had no electric watermaker, why I never gave my satellite phone number to friends, and why I cursed the day I finally had to use it. It was forever difficult for me to explain my motives, most people were completely dumbfounded by my deliberate abstinence. My only explanation was that I wanted a ‘pure and simple’ adventure. I could clarify it no more.

I now understand that it was, in fact, all very simple. I somehow knew, deep down, that the sculptor within had work to do, and that any luxury or convenience, anything impure or extraneous, was a hindrance and distraction. I wanted to give him every chance to etch and shape, define and clarify, to help me make sense of the world, and my place within it, to discover where my own truth lies. I now understand that the secrets of the universe are there to be had, ripe for the picking, yet we find ourselves playing in the mud, wondering where we went wrong. There is a richly flowering grove within us all. Through deliberate action I was able to stumble across it, to pick its fruit, to take a hearty bite, right to the core, and let the sweet juices drip down my chin. This is the reason the experience is so rewarding, beautiful and inexplicably joyous. In few other modes of living do we get to feel the beautification of our soul within.

This is why an ocean must be rowed.