Yachts and Airplanes
I like to ask people this question:
Assuming money was no object, would you rather have your own plane or your own yacht?
Before you go on, commit to one. Think about it a little bit.
This came up on my road trip in 2011 when Evan, Stefan, and I visited Elvis Presley's house outside Memphis. Elvis had a couple of planes. Maybe he had a yacht, I don't know.
I think this question gets at the heart of whether a person is a destination-oriented person or a journey-oriented person.
The yacht is about going. It's not about where you start or where you end, it's hardly about that at all. It's about traveling for the sake of traveling. It's about the value of your own thoughts and of good company, regardless of the physical setting which is at the same time deeply meaningful and dull.
The plane is about going places. It's all about seeing as much of the world as possible, about consuming the vast buffet of cultures to experience, vistas to behold, and people to meet. The world is your oyster, and it would be a waste not to take advantage of that. ('Or would it?', say the yacht-people).
I think our answer to this question has implications about how we live our lives. I'm still reading the amazing Hermann Hesse book that I wrote about last time, and he had this to say:
We separate love from its object, love alone is enough for us, in the same way that, in wandering, we don't look for a goal, we only look for the happiness of wandering, only the wandering.
I think I'm a yacht person.
Assuming money was no object, would you rather have your own plane or your own yacht?
Before you go on, commit to one. Think about it a little bit.
This came up on my road trip in 2011 when Evan, Stefan, and I visited Elvis Presley's house outside Memphis. Elvis had a couple of planes. Maybe he had a yacht, I don't know.
I think this question gets at the heart of whether a person is a destination-oriented person or a journey-oriented person.
The yacht is about going. It's not about where you start or where you end, it's hardly about that at all. It's about traveling for the sake of traveling. It's about the value of your own thoughts and of good company, regardless of the physical setting which is at the same time deeply meaningful and dull.
The plane is about going places. It's all about seeing as much of the world as possible, about consuming the vast buffet of cultures to experience, vistas to behold, and people to meet. The world is your oyster, and it would be a waste not to take advantage of that. ('Or would it?', say the yacht-people).
I think our answer to this question has implications about how we live our lives. I'm still reading the amazing Hermann Hesse book that I wrote about last time, and he had this to say:
We separate love from its object, love alone is enough for us, in the same way that, in wandering, we don't look for a goal, we only look for the happiness of wandering, only the wandering.
I think I'm a yacht person.
Dinesh Ayyappan