Decision-making skills are important. They’re important in dating, they’re important in life, and they’re important in choosing your extra-curricular activities.
This weekend three of my very best friends were in town, one of which is getting ready to shove off to an Israeli Kibbutz for 7 months in a week. It was the last time we’ll all be together for at least that long. Needless to say we wanted to do something special.
I was faced with an unusual work-schedule that put any nightlife activities off-limits. Over lunch we raised the subject of how to best spend our time. One of us, whom we shall refer to by his woefully underused nickname “Cash Money” suggested kayaking. Cash Money owns three kayaks–two singles, and one double.
The idea was initially shot down, only to reemerge as the winner over the admittedly lack-luster alternatives of sitting around doing nothing or driving into the city and wandering around. Someone suggested hiking, but I declined because–and this becomes significant later–”I [didn't] want to have to shower again.”
Half an hour into initiating Project Kayak, it became apparent that Cash Money had grossly underrepresented the amount of work and prep-time that was to go into the adventure. An hour after setting out to fetch the Kayaks, we were ready to shove off.
Cash Money took a single, and a friend whom we shall call Mr. Orange took the other single. This left me in the double with our friend who was preparing to leave for the Kibbutz, whom we can call “Prime Minister.”
Shortly after attempting to shove off we realized there were significant problems at play. For one, the water was incredibly choppy and full of surf-quality waves. For another, Mr. Orange was not an adept kayaker. And finally, the kayak containing Prime Minister and me was far from seaworthy–it was taking in and holding an alarming amount of water.
To remedy this final problem, Cash Money called us back to the shore and had us remove our kayak’s plugs. (Don’t ask me why or how opening up several holes in our kayak was intended to reduce its water retention, but expert outdoorsman and kayaker Cash Money insisted this would help.) In what I am now convinced was a bad omen, I lost a sandal during this process.
Prime Minister wanted to head back, but Cash Money insisted we blaze forward. For my part, I didn’t want to throw away all the prep time. I had already put on sunscreen. I hate putting on sunscreen. Some of the most painful decisions of my life, in fact, have been made because I didn’t want to waste the work of putting on sunscreen (invariably, a part of that pain is caused by a sunscreen and sweat mixture falling in and burning my eyes), but that’s a story for another time.
We pressed on, and half a mile from the shore we discovered that, in fact, opening up several holes in the bottom of our kayak did not stop it from retaining water. We expressed all the surprise due such a shocking revelation, and called Cash Money back to look at our situation. He inspected our kayak and insisted nothing was out of the ordinary.
We went another quarter of a mile (putting us in almost exactly half the mile-and-a-half distance from the shores and the sand-dune breakers ahead). The kayak seemed to be filling with more and more water. Fortunately, this was rendered a non-issue when the kayak, as if waiting for the perfect center between two land masses, decided to capsize.
The swim back to shore was a delightful 45 minutes spent in 50 degree water. Halfway back, I saw what a thought was a buoy. Only, it wasn’t a buoy. It was a waste disposal system, pumping out the city’s septic system leech-line waste (for those of you who are civilized, and live in cities with sewers, that’s just a roundabout way of saying “shit water”).
At that point I realized I would probably have to shower again.
Finally, I made my way back to shore, and to Prime Minister’s car, where we took advantage of the heater.
As I sat there, the warm blast of the heater staving off hypothermia, I reflected on the choices that had brought me there. One could argue that I simply went with the flow, and made incredibly subtle decisions, better classified as reactions to stimuli. But this is a cop out.
Everything that happened to me that day was a result of something I had decided to do, or not do. True, in the haze that followed my initial drowning, I proclaimed to Cash Money that “I blame YOU, you weaseley motherfucker! I blame YOU!” But this was the idle finger-pointing of a man about to die. Upon further, warmer, reflection, I can see my own role in the event.
All the information at hand suggested Project Kayak would end in disaster. And yet, my desire to put my sunscreen application and other preparation to good use blinded my judgment.
The moral here is clear: anything you do or do not do is a result of a decision you make or do not make. And whether or not you accept responsibility for them in the present, you will get the pleasure (or displeasure) of the consequences.
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