One night as we sat watching the sun begin its nightly adieu, a ship came rolling across the sea; first at a distance, then straight through the sun’s soft and glowing beams. What an incredible seat for the evening’s golden show. Continuing on and eventually out of sight, I wondered where the boat was headed. And being just a few days from graduating with my Masters and then a few days more from packing up and returning to the States, I couldn’t avoid turning the question on myself. Where was I headed?

As I wrote the title of this post, I suddenly remembered the opening words of one of my favorite books. “Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board,” begins Zora Neale Hurston in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Where am I going? And why can’t my ship simply come into port and make it infinitely easier for me? If only it were that simple.

In life, it’s necessary to learn how to swim for that very reason: the ship will never pull in and wait; it may catch your eye as it crosses your path, but you’ve got to chase it down. And in doing so, the waters you traverse strengthen you for what’s aboard and waiting.

The dreams and visions of how and where I’d like to use my talents are never going to pull up and wait for me to join them, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t suppose to be. In fact, the longer I live with them, I deeper I  feel that those dreams and those visions most definitely exist for a purpose. They’re out on that boat, beckoning me to come on in, saying the water’s fine.

And of course there’s a chance that once I wade in and cross the distance they won’t be exactly as I’ve always imagined, but I’ve got to get close to know. I’ve got to just get swimming.