DECANTATIONS

I've always admired the ancient mariners. Can you imagine braving the seemingly infinite seas with its myriad untold perils in nothing but a leaky wooden boat? They harvested the winds to propel them through their voyages. To guide their course, they trusted the distant lights of the stars. The belief systems of their time insisted that the world was flat, and that ships that sailed beyond the mapped waters were in danger of falling off the edge of the world! And yet these brave explorers courageously ventured ever onwards to discover new worlds, and encounter other civilizations.

In this modern age we have the advantages of modern engines to propel us. To guide us we have GPS and mobile phones to ensure that we would never get lost. Yet, despite these modern conveniences, our generation seems to be in want of brave explorers. Is it because there is far less to explore these days? No, rather we have walled ourselves inside our cities with our fears.

We have lost the courage, and we have let our fears dictate the way we live our lives. Likewise we let fear rule us. We become hooded falcons with clipped wings, forced to wallow in darkness. But despite our bondage, the wild bird within each of us, the proud inheritor of the endless sky still screams to fly.

We speak of finding our true purpose, discovering who we are, who we can be. Then, we must venture out! Out of our shell, out of our home, our career, out of everything that is familiar and predictable.

As Gibran wrote in "the Prophet":

"Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.

But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed.

Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast."

As Gibran further stated in the Prophet: "You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down.

You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living.

And though of magnificence and splendour, your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing.

For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night."

We should then go out into the world, spread out your wings. We should stop dithering at the edge of the precipice and take a firm decisive step into our future. Only when we have learned to let go of our fears, to plummet into the great unknown, only then can we spread our wings to fly into our own piece of sky.