The Resilience Lab
Boat work is exhausting and uncomfortable, but it reveals something deeper: resilience is not about control, it’s about learning to live with uncertainty.
I don't like boat work.
It exposes my ignorance. Tasks that would be simple in a house or on a car turn into a contortionist performance. Every muscle is sore by end of day. My brain flatlines.
My physician put it plainly at my last physical: too much boat work, not worth it.
I didn't agree then. I do now.
But I don't think I would be sailing without a story I want to tell, without a hypothesis I want to test.
Refitting the boat reminds me of setting up a laboratory. I didn't get into science to set up labs — nobody does. It was always a means to an end. A story to tell. A hypothesis to test.