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My Series of Unfortunate Events


White sand beaches and giant palm trees awaited me as I landed in Tortolla (not to be mistaken for Tortuga from Pirates of the Caribbean ), the largest of the British Virgin Islands . This was my first time going out of the country, my first time in the exotic Caribbean , where I expected everything to look like a postcard. All the beaches pure white with a cloudless sky and a gentle breeze making the various plants sway. As I stepped off the plane and looked for my postcard-Kodak moment, it was nowhere to be found. All I saw was a tarmac and a field of grass. I shrugged it off and said, it’s an airport, how great could an airport be?
So we go through the extremely boring customs procedures and get a shuttle and finally arrive at our hotel for the night, because the next day, we were headed to a boat so that we could bear-boat from one island to the next for a whole week. When we got to the hotel, I was of course expecting another postcard moment, with white curtains billowing out the front door, the spacious living area opening up to a panoramic beach view. But yet again, it came up short of my “vision”, my expectation. It looked very close to a U.S. equivilant of a Motel 6. Then I started getting a little upset about it. I was expecting a perfect Caribbean vacation and so far, all I had gotten was a tarmac and a Motel 6.
As I woke up the next morning, I began to remember, Holy Crap, I get to go sailing today for the first time ever!!!! In the Caribbean !! We headed over to the boat rentals to meet our very close family friends that we were going with and to see our boat for the first time. The boat was pretty close to what I had imagined your typical sail boat to look like. I was ready to leave and say goodbye to the Motel 6 and head off to the deserted islands to finally get a glimpse of what the Caribbean really had to offer. We set sail for a small island a few miles off the coast and arrived after 2 hours of ridiculously inefficient sailing since only 2 people on the boat had ever sailed before. When we got to the island, I was disappointed to say, it looked very similar to any other island I had ever seen. Where the hell had they taken all these perfect postcards and why couldn’t I go there?
The next week was a series of experiences that in my mind were far from epic. During our first 3 days, there were scattered rain showers, our second dinner of the trip was ten of us under the deck making sandwiches. The day after, we were almost run over by a cruise liner and we spent two hours trying to moor in the bay. And then the rest of the trip went pretty well until the last day. On our six hour sail back to the main island of Tortolla , we went right through a stormy section of sea and had to spend the entire time under the boat freezing our asses off, in the Caribbean !
I went through most of the rest of the trip waiting for my epic Caribbean panorama and never quite found it even though I got close a few times. But when we were on the journey home, I was glad to get off a cramped boat and to head home to all my creature comforts. But when I got home, I started to crave and desire that small, dinky boat, and the Motel 6, and my whole trip again. When I told people about it, I said it was the greatest trip I’d ever been on and that it was a party from start to finish. I wonder why I remember my trip now as being so much fun, if so much had gone wrong. My expectations had blinded me, and I didn’t get to really soak in the experience because I was to concerned in making my experience fit the stereotypical model, rather than letting my experience be a true experience. It seemed like just one thing gone wrong after another, but time turns mistakes into adventures. I mean how many people can look back and say, “ I almost got run over by a cruise liner” or “It was so funny, we were stuck trying to anchor ourselves for 2 hours” and my personal favorite “ I froze my ass off on my exotic Caribbean vacation”.
I took this to heart when I looked back and saw that my vacation was one of the best I’ve ever had, not because of extreme luxury or comfort in familiarity, but because of the experience and participation in an adventure on a small boat with nine of the closest people in my life. In the future, I would hate to say that I did everything exactly how I was supposed to do it. Who would want to say that they lived by the book and did everything that was tried and true? In my opinion, that’s not living, but running in circles, treading water. It gives you something to do, but never gets you anywhere. Life should be about embracing little mistakes and flaws in the game plan, rather than fearing them, because sometimes a series of mistakes can be more enjoyable than a perfect plan, and is always more interesting.

 

 

 

Artist Statement

I wrote this essay to address how many people become caught up with how something should happen, rather than making something happen their own way. I have a large problem with this. Whenever I do anything, go anywhere, do anything I have an image of how it should be, a way it should feel and if those don't happen, I get upset because I want everything to happen the way that I want it to. But what I realized in writing this is that when you're doing something for the first time, like going to the Caribbean or skydiving or whatever, you don't know how its supposed to feel or exactly what's going to happen and you just have to go with whatever is going on and soak in everything that's happening. When you're trying something new, you have to try to enjoy the feeling of unfamiliarity in whatever you're doing. I hope people take away this message from my essay and think of it when they go out and have adventures of their own.