The coast of Mexico stretches away south. From my hotel room in San Diego I can see where I will journey tomorrow to join the Semester at Sea ship to sail to Hawaii. As a mentor for the new program, Unreasonable at Sea, I’ll be working with 25 young entrepreneurs who have joined this inaugural program to bring social entrepreneuring to the world.
The lines from Tennyson’s Ulysses come to me:
Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
Not quite. I’ll only be on the boat to Hawaii. I’m due on the central coast of California to give a speech for Pacific Gas and Electric on the 17th. We’ll dock in Hilo on the 15th, I’ll spend the day with the Governor, various dignitaries and our Unreasonable entrepreneurs, then hop a night flight to LA, thence to San Luis Obispo, grab some sleep and go back to work.
Meanwhile, after a day in Ensenada, Mexico, readying our team for the trip, we’ll do something I’ve long wondered how it would feel to do: point the nose of a big boat west and just keep going.
For years teaching in San Francisco, I’d cross the Golden Gate Bridge. Below, putting out to sea, would be the big ships hauling containers to China, to Japan to …?
What does it feel like, I’d wonder, to leave land, to commit oneself to the sea?
A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for, said John Shedd.
Reckon I’m fixing to find out just what they are meant to do.
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