Hope, Faith and Purpose: Part 1
Hope, Faith and Purpose: Part 1
Hope is what allows you to believe in a brighter better future.
Faith is what allows us to stay on the path and keep that hope alive.
Purpose is the reason you get out of bed and try again and again.
I’m going preface this written piece with a warning… as it were. I don’t mean to go on about how terrible things have been in the past couple of years for me, or try and draw sympathy and make myself look like some pathetic, helpless victim. This is not my intention. However without the dark days and the fall we can not have the new high and rebirth. The overall message of this piece is about being able to start again, to overcome the dark days and still have hope. Hope that there will be a reason why you’ve suffered though the dark days and that something good will come in your future if you just keep on going. If I do not write about the decline of my hope over the past few years then it leaves the section about a new start without context and weight, however if you wish to skip over the decline and shoot straight to the part about regaining hope and what I’m going to do with it, then please scroll down to the heading “A new start”
The original hope
A few years ago now I had a dream of sailing a boat down the European west coast and into the Mediterranean, living a life sailing around sun kissed waters and finding hidden little gems in the areas. This was the dream. My ultimate goal. Maybe one day it would lead to sailing around the world. The possibilities were endless. I had the boat, the means and the know-how and a partner who was sailing with me. Then everything started to decline once we sailed North out of Beaucette Marina instead of South.
The loss of hope over many years
We couldn’t stay on Guernsey throughout the winter and the sail there had wiped us both out even though it was only 17 hours. We weren’t up to sailing to France just yet, or sailing back to England, but we couldn’t stay in Guernsey either… but the boat could. So we packed our stuff, got a ferry back to England and a plane up the country to stay with my parents for a few months. It was horrible being stuck in limbo, unable to do anything with the boat for progress, but in the meantime worked on ourselves a bit and kept that hope alive. I was constantly dreaming up things that we could film when we were back on the boat and places we could go. We took a trip to Rome where I filmed everything I could and even got engaged. Nothing could stop us… except this one decision that was made.
When we got back to the boat, we found that some problems had developed over the winter season that needed fixing and that basically took out most the funds we had saved up over the past few months. However we got the work done and I was happy to head south and continue on. I was filming everyday and being active. However my partner was struggling. Her sister had announced earlier that she was pregnant. My partner wasn’t feeling so great about the condition of the boat and after a break down she asked us to sail North, back to England and Falmouth. So we did.
I remember coming round the headland which is home to St Anthony’s Lighthouse and feeling my heart sink as Falmouth came into view. It felt like we had undone the progress of the previous year in a couple of days. Right back where we started.
We took to a Visitor Mooring and went to spend a couple of nights with my partner’s dad, the next morning was one of the worst mornings for both of us. We got a phone call telling us that our boat, our home, had come off of it’s mooring and was beached. It took us a couple of hours to be able to get back to Falmouth and the boat, by which time it had been towed by the salvage company to a pontoon in the middle of the estuary. It cost £1000. One-Thousand pounds.
After that we felt very nervous about sailing, we no longer had funds to pull her out the water to see if any damage had been done to the keel so I didn’t want to stress it. Overall this meant that we barely went sailing compared to the previous year. However, we eventually got the boat out a bit more and more, then took my parents and sister to the Isle’s of Scilly. It was by one saving grace that summer as to the retreat to Falmouth being worth it.
The Isle’s of Scilly were fantastic, I was in awe each day we were there, for the most part we were blessed with great weather, except for two exceptions. The first being a storm blowing in from the East. With this in mind we took shelter in St Mary’s Harbour, we picked up a mooring in the tight mooring field upon the guidance of the harbour master and settled down for the night. The next morning was wet. The rain was chucking it down, so we all elected to stay inside and were having some personal time sat around in pyjama’s… that is until we heard an almighty crunching noise. Someone had crashed into us. We ran onto the deck to see what was happening to find a French boat with a bow thruster had gone into the side of our bow. They were sailing aimlessly around a tight mooring field and not looking where they were going. There’s a reason why this mooring field asks you to wait for a harbour master to guide you in. Their insurance company still haven’t paid out for damages.
The second bad weather incident was on the sail back to Falmouth. We had set off in the early hours of the morning as we had to be back on the English mainland for my sister to make it back to her hometown in time for her to keep her job. However there was a storm forecasted to come, no worries I thought, as long as we keep our average speed up then we’ll get back before the storm hits. We might have to push the engine a bit to keep the speed up, but so be it, needs must and all that. The weather forecast was wrong, that storm came in a lot earlier then we were told. It caught us just as we were south of Newlyn. My father and sister were feeling the rough weather and finding themselves throwing up over the side. My mother and partner were relatively okay. However, it still wasn’t the best. Contacting Newlyn harbour I found that they could take us in on marina pontoons, and from research in the cruising guides I knew this harbour would be safe and protected in the current conditions.
We made a beeline for Newlyn harbour, along the way I was in full control of the boat. We only had the jib up as the mainsail was too much, even reefed. (I had planned on asking a sailmaker to stitch in another reef because it was a problem before.) The jib, however still provided a lot of power to the boat and we were maxing out the hull speed. All of this however put a massive strain on my body and triggered off my Hypermobility Syndrome in a big way. It led to me passing out and coming to screaming on a park monument nearby. I thought we were there for 30 minutes, however the whole incident lasted for 3 hours. I’m not going to go into detail, all I will say is that it was one of the worst things I’ve experienced in my life and still has me getting a bit panicked in crowded places, especially supermarkets.
This led to the next decline in my hope. I was stuck in a wheelchair. I felt useless. I had to see a doctor back in my hometown and by the time I had gotten back down south I was struggling to make it back onto our boat, unfortunately we had to stay with my partners family for a while until we could sort out alternative means, this was in the form of my other boat, which was smaller, but easier to put into a boatyard. It wasn’t the easiest downsizing to a smaller boat in a boatyard which meant that we had to walk to the toilet block with our own toilet roll if we needed to go… and washing the pots and pans were done at the outside tap. So what do we do, we get a dog! A cocker spaniel named Kernow.
A few months later we drained my bank account getting our main boat into a position where the three of us could live again. This meant taking her out the water at another boatyard, doing some repairs and cleaning up, then craning her back into a marina. A few months in and it had all gotten a bit too much for my partner, so she left.
Upon leaving she gave me two options regarding Kernow:
1 — I could keep him
Or
2- She would help me re-home him.
Before we got Kernow I told her that if we were to get him and raise him, then that’s it. That is what we are doing, and that the only way I’m leaving him is if either he or I die. I knew that taking in a puppy and raising it would be a challenge, even more so for living on the water in a 34ft boat, however you stick it out and good stuff happens.
In this time since we had come back to Falmouth, it was decided that we were likely going to be here for 2–3 years before we could set off again — getting Kernow kind of screwed that timeline up a bit — however I wanted to make the most of my time having to be back in Falmouth, so I applied for University. I had gone to University before to study Business Law, but dropped out part way through the second year, I wanted to see if I could have done it, but with a subject I was at least passionate about.
Marine and Natural History Photography. To my knowledge this course is only taught at Falmouth University, and several of the graduates have gone on to do great things working with documentary crews including David Attenborough. They also run a guest lecture series which has allowed me to discover new ways to do my photography and share it with the world. My friend now jokes that I have a crush on one of them as I talk about her work a lot and how she inspired me.
I was accepted onto the course with the weakest application in the world, it basically came down to my Personal Statement and Portfolio along with the interview… though I later found out the lecturer had accepted me onto the course because he thought I would be interesting… whether that is a compliment or an insult I suppose is up to me and what I do with this opportunity.
Whilst I am very happy and pleased about this, and has allowed my photography to be displayed at the Lost Gardens of Heligan, I still feel the call of the ocean and the south, those sun-kissed waters and golden beaches. I yearn for that freedom, and having the commitment to the University sometimes makes me feel trapped.
So at the end of 2019 I’m doing a University course which is giving me mixed feelings, I am solely responsible for this energetic little pup, and my fiancée has left me trying to fund a lifestyle that was built with two incomes in mind. It was a dark time.
I felt like I had nothing to stand on. No solid ground beneath my feet. There was no wind in my sails, nor a suitable place to drop my anchor. My family were wonderfully supportive and did everything they could to keep me going. The future, however, stopped existing. It was now murky and foggy. To keep with the sailing analogy, not only was my boat without a rudder, but the compass was spinning in circles as well! Not only did I not know where I wanted to go in the future, what I wanted to aim for, I had no idea how to progress in any direction either.
As we all know, 2020 has been a turbulent year. For me it started off adjusting to life in the marina on the boat with Kernow, my pup. I had to attend University as well and didn’t want to be leaving Kernow alone for too long each day, so on occasion when we had many lectures in a day I would bring him in with me, where he would soak up all the attention the other students would be giving him, then fall asleep at my feet as the lecture started. Amazingly he never caused any problems and there were no complaints about him either.
I met new people and started to loosen up a bit. I started up the salsa dancing again, going with my dear friend Felicitas. A little detour here if I may — Salsa classes had always been a wonderful place to escape from the rest of the world. The teachers, Emma and James are lovely people and fantastic friends who have always endeared to give the best experience they can. The other students as well, who vary in age of people from every stage in life, are as kind as can be. With the way the class is taught, all the leads dance with all the follows in a circle where you keep switching partners. When that music is going and you have the whole class dancing in unison, you won’t be thinking about anything outside of that class. The only things going through your mind are the music flowing through your body, how lovely your current partner is looking with their smiling face, and the fact that you’re dancing! Hopefully well. Many a week has the Salsa class been my saviour and been able to turn my mood right back round, it was obvious to myself when I hadn’t been one week because my mental health would be suffering. However, like many other social things, it has been put on hold by the Covid-19 pandemic. The day I will be able to go back to Salsa classes will be one of the best days of my life.
When the first Lockdown hit, I actually felt a little relieved. I knew that it would be causing a lot struggle for many people, but for me it was a chance to catch up with myself and not be constantly feeling like I’m on my back foot. It felt like I was able to reclaim myself, who I was and my identity outside of my last relationship. I cut my own hair and shaved off the sides of my beard, a default to how it had been before I had gotten involved with my last partner.
I started playing the guitar again as well, along with the ukulele. I even played and sang on the back of the boat knowing full well that people around the marina could hear me if they were walking past. It may not sound like a big thing, but for me it was a huge step in the right direction. I also managed to lose some weight as well.
However throughout all this I had been in a vicious cycle. I would start going on the up and up, feeling great, feeling like I was sorting out my life and that I could finally start moving onto new things… then the momentum would fade and along with it the vibrancy of which I saw the world. It was all too easy to default to the lazy way of living. The one with no big risks, no leaps of faith, just me surviving day to day. Waiting until that next spurt of motivation and momentum.
As time went on and on, and I went through cycle after cycle it got harder and harder. I knew what was going to come. I knew that this spurt of motivation wasn’t going to last. That it would only be a few weeks before I was back on that sofa watching TV all day.
The last spurt of motivation was a big one, and like that old saying goes, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. I was taking a big interest in Portrait Photography and had spent the day with a friend who volunteered to model for me, I enjoyed it and wanted to do it again. I took joy from not only spending the day having someone laughing at both myself and themselves, but also feeling themselves and gaining confidence in their positioning and the way they carried themselves by the second.
I was also getting back into my landscape photography and writing about the photo’s I had took, what they were and what they meant to me. Writing it for this very website and being able to see that people were actually reading what I was writing was encouraging.
I wanted to build on all of this push further with it, however my Hypermobility Syndrome had other ideas and I was stuck at my then partner’s house for two weeks. She was fantastic about the whole thing, if feeling guilty about ‘breaking me’ even though it wasn’t her fault. I will always maintain that because I am the only one who knows my limits and how close I am getting to them it is only ever my fault for ‘breaking me’. She kept my spirits high and had me laughing each day, helping me to rest and relax. She was also great with Kernow. However the relationship was not meant to be and we ended things nicely on mutual terms.
November came around with the second lockdown and remember what I said about the bigger they are, the harder they fall? Well I fell hard. I crashed and burned. I was breaking down daily and barely hanging on. Unfortunately I had taken to drinking most days to just try and get outside of my own mind. It was not a good time and I’m ashamed of the stress I put on my sister who was trying so desperately to keep me on level footing. At this time I felt so alone. My sister was coming round daily, but yet I still felt unwanted and alone. Kernow was one of the only things keeping me functioning and getting me out of bed daily. I still had a duty of care to him and he is my world, no matter how bad things are for myself, I will always give him the best that I can manage. I wondered about ending it some nights, however the thought of what it would do to my family and how things might go for Kernow horrified me, I knew that I had to keep on going… but there was still no fight in me anymore.
Overtime it just sort of grinded into a lack of caring about a lot of things, only doing what I had to get to the next day. I tried to put on a brave face and make the world think that I was doing much better, but still I struggled. December rolled around and I still struggled. I still struggle now.
It’s now the Christmas holidays. My sister and I were fortunate enough to make it to our parents house in the travel window given to students. This is where we are staying at the moment, Kernow is with us as well. It’s given me time to think, to not worry about the life I have in Cornwall too much, in essence I’ve been able to take a step back. With this I’ve been thinking about my predicament and why I feel this way, also where I want to be in the future. Why I should care about what I’m doing.
The conclusion I have come to is that since sailing North out of Beaucette Marina back to England instead of South to France, I have lost hope. Step by step, each event I have written about here has taken hope of a better future, a future that excites me away. Without hope there is no reason to keep going. There is no purpose. There’s no fight in the me to push myself. Without hope facing a storm you’re going to cower and hide, and that’s what I’ve bene doing. Especially this last year. Cowering and hiding, living in fear of taking any major risks or leaps of faith.
So now I’m trying to find that Hope again, that hope which will give me purpose once again.
Hope is what gets you to keep on going, to go through the bad and reach the good. It’s what happens when we dream of a brighter future, when we imagine what kind of life we can have if we keep working at the projects we are doing. Hope is the light that keeps guiding us forward. Often now, for all of us, that light can feel like a little speck in a vast dark void of emptiness, but it’s still there. For all of us. It may be tiny and the light may feel dim, but it is still there. We just need to search for it and nuture it until that light is so bright that it comes from within your body and shines through your skin, your actions and your thoughts.
Even whilst I type this I’m scared. I’m still figuring things out myself. I’ve taken a few days to write this piece and been thinking about it whilst I’ve been driving, whilst I’ve been reading, writing, whilst I’m in the shower and it’s my last thoughts before bed. When I started this piece I felt that I had no hope. However, that’s not what I had said. Whenever I referred to hope, I said I had lost it. Let me repeat that. I had lost hope. We just need to search for it. It’s there somewhere. Once we find it we can work on it, protect it and grow it.
As I am writing now I’m sat on an armchair, my laptop on my lap and headphones in. Kernow has come up onto the stool next to the armchair, so I gave him a cuddle and he came forward towards me. So now he’s under my left arm and has fallen asleep on my stomach. I mention this because Kernow gives me hope. My family are all currently under the one roof. They give me hope. My friends who have put up with me suffering through hard times. They give me hope. The people who have stood by me. They give me hope. I just wasn’t looking in the right direction.
I’ve been thinking hope is about the future, the hope of a better future, the reason to keep on going. I was wrong. I should have been looking to the present and the past. Recognizing what I have in this exact moment in time. What I have accomplished, no matter how small it may feel to me now. Hope is about the future… but it’s not always found there. It can be found in the present, it can be found in the past, one needs only look for it.
So now I have hope, hope that with Kernow reminding me that I am loved daily, that with my amazing family, and the fantastic people in my life, no matter how hard things may get, as long as I look after myself and push myself forwards, then the only way the future will get worse is if I give up. It all depends on where you end the story.
I’m still terrified though. How many times can I keep picking myself back up after a fall? Can I truly keep on going? How bad will my next fall be? I have no idea what the answers are. There are so many terrible things that may happen. That’s where faith comes in. Faith, Hope and Purpose all work together and impact each other, if you don’t have one then it can be hard to keep fighting, but Hope, hope is where it starts.
I don’t know what you, dear reader, have been through, or what you may be going through, but I assure you that there is hope in your life too, it may only be as bright and big as a glow-worm, but if you look hard enough, you will find it. Once you find it, stare at it’s beauty for a while, be grateful for it, then we can start to grow it and protect it. There is always hope. Always.
