Last night, at 10:29pm
Ellen Macarthur officially completed her round the world voyage. The trip took about 71 and a half days, which beat the previous world record by more than a day. Now why would anyone want to spend nearly 72 days at sea on their own? She's had to cope with dangerous conditions, a reportedly uncomfortable ship, limited food supplies, very little sleep, and extremely restricted contact with anyone. Why would she want to do that?
Because she loves sailing passionately.
Let's face it, you wouldn't do that unless you really,
really enjoy sailing. She's passionate about it, and loves being out there at sea, regardless of how dangerous and difficult it is, and how insane it might seem to the rest of us. She's already planning more trips for records she wants to break, like crossing the Atlantic. She lives sailing, and puts everything she has into it, and is brilliant at it as a result.
And what of other people with other passions?
Sport is an easy example for this kind of thing: David Beckham is brilliant (or at least he was at his peak, Euro 2004 notwithstanding) because he loves football and trains incredibly hard.
- In the world of business and computing, Bill Gates is a brilliant businessman. Whether his software is any good is not the point - he is a great and dedicated businessman, which is reflected in the billions he's made. On the other side of the computing coin, there's Linus Torvalds, who loves computing and programming so much that he wrote the core of an operating system that has a real chance of rivalling MS Windows, for fun and distributed it for free. How about John Carmack? The man is a programming genius, who is pushing hardware to it's limits and creating some beautiful game engines that few can compete with.
- What about the world of music? People like Thom Yorke and his merry band are clearly dedicated to producing some incredible music. Or there's people like Tom Morello or Matt Bellamy who do amazing things with guitars that I can only dream of.
- Moving on from music, there's people like Bono and Bob Geldof, who are unlikely to stop banging their drum any time soon.
- Consider some Christians. Andy Hawthorne clearly isn't going to stop doing what he's doing until he's led all the young people in Manchester to God or died trying. That man is incredibly committed to what he's doing.
So what's my point in all of this? I guess I find it quite intimidating that some people are so dedicated to what they do - they are so passionate about something. People who will practise their "thing" day in day out for hours on end. Can you imagine practising free kicks for hours every evening? Programming for no reason that that you enjoy it? Playing the guitar from when you wake up to when you go to sleep? Sailing around the world? Lobbying for a political agenda? Giving your entire life up to try to save a city for God? I don't know if I can.
I'd love to be passionate enough about something to eat, sleep and breathe it, and give my all to it and excel at it. And I know that thing should be God, but it's... difficult.
An old friend wrote a poem a while ago that kinda says some of this. It's called Just Like Me and you can find it about halfway down the page in that link.
