SUICIDE DENIED

Ignorant persons describe my planned trip as a suicide mission. There are exceptions. This gentleman defended me by writing in Wall Street Journal: All the signs of a suicidal personality are there–enthusiasm, confidence, zest for life, building something that has never been built before, big plans for the future. By golly, you must be right!

I like that. Of course the very idea that I have thoughts of suicide is wrong. My boat and me are sane. A small boat well made is safer than a big one. It is less complicated and smaller forces are acting on it. On a small boat you have more control.

As for myself I was raised on the windward side of a small Island in the North Sea and as a grown up person I have messed about in small boats for more than fifty years. I have in small homemade boats contented spent more than a year in those southern stormy waters called roaring forties and screaming fifties. That includes passage in a nineteen feet boat, east to west around Cape Horn in June, the full southern winter. And that was before GPS-navigation. The sun did not rise more than 11 degrees above horizon at noon. Compared to that modern navigation is easy. I know what I talking about and I know what to expect.

Most people misunderstand life. Let me explain.

Comfort does not make you happy, on the contrary it is dangerous to your health. It makes you lazy, fat and bored.  It is only by using energy that you can create energy and it is the surplus of energy that makes you happy and healthy. Happiness cannot be bought for money.

Man adapts. The human being is the most adaptable creature in the universe.

When a person smokes more dopamine than needed is released. Dopamine is part of natures feedback system that helps us to survive. This nicotine release creates a momentarily happiness not connected to surviving. To restore homeostasis the body adapts by reducing its dopamine receptors. In the same way as a sensible farmer would reduce the area he cultivates if it suddenly started to grow more food than he needed.

When the dopamine receptors are artificially over stimulated. The size of the receptors is reduced and the smoker becomes a slave to nicotine. Smoking is short sighted.

Borrowing money for consumption is also short sighted. It is pleasant momentarily but the borrower becomes a slave to the bank. Borrowing is a disaster in the long run.

Daily I use a bicycle to transport myself. Occasionally when leaving for a different part of Sweden to give a talk I use my car. By pressing the accelerator I can climb steep hills with no effort. It is pleasant and my body adapts quickly. It learns that going uphill can be easy and fast. The next day when I am back on my bike climbing a hill I am in for a surprise. It is laborious. My body has adapted to the ease of driving. It has been addicted to the power of oil. Had I not used my will power and returned to my bike and used effort to climb hills I would have become a slave to my car.

In a thousand ways our civilization over stimulates us. Not just by nicotine, by cars or by lending us money. Most people nowadays are slaves to many masters.

As with all addictions we need more drugs, more borrowed money, bigger cars and bigger boats. We get deeper and deeper into trouble and misery.

With my voyage I hope to show mankind that, luckily there is an opposite way, a more natural, sane and ecological way to be happy. Slowly as I have gained insight I have made myself less and less dependent on stimulants, I have become less and less a slave. I have never used coffee, beer, vine, or tobacco, not even once. Twenty years ago I stopped drinking tee. I have no TV. Ten years ago I stopped listening to the radio. It took about a year for me to get detoxed. Now I need no radio. I hear my inner voice loud and clear. I do my own thinking.

The way indigenous people orient themselves in nature and navigate at sea is amazing; still a Swedish man born into such a society at a young age will acquire the same skill.

Blind persons compensates by developing other senses like hearing to guide them through life.

Feelings and moods is nature’s way to guide animals and us to a behavior that favors survival. Animals are not bored, except caged in a zoo.  What makes us different from animals is not feelings but control over feelings by the frontal lobes. We use alcohol to anaesthetize them when we like to relax.

In my planned trip I will be at sea for more than a year. There I will be protected from over stimulation. Hopefully that way I will gain much of my senses potential power and increase the clarity of my mind. A voyage like my planned one will give plentiful stimulation. I aim to come back a younger man to start building a nice small cruising boat; one not restricted by a ridicules ten feet rule.

These thoughts are old fashioned. They have been around for thousands of years. They can be found in all ancient civilizations in one form or other they are based on fundamental principles, but as no one makes money on them money is not spent to advertise them.

Regards Yrvind.