About Extra Dreams and Drake

Post 1463:

I sometimes take a few minutes a day to read nonfiction. I have this book on explorers that I’ve thumbed through a thousand times over the years. It sums up huge lives in short bits. Great little book. What a collection of stories. Stories about actual people whose actions still resonate today.

Let’s get something straight. The guys who explored the uncharted oceans way back in the day were absolutely insane. Ambition doesn't cut it. Greed for plunder and fame ain’t getting it done. Intrepid sounds noble. Ballsy sounds badass. But they were all of those things. Plus insane. Also, brilliant. I’m not sure there is a word that sufficiently sums them dudes up.

My favorite was Sir Francis Drake. He was regular guy from England who decided to wage a personal war with the then richest country on Earth, Spain. Most of the stuff he did was without permission and absolutely had no chance of working. He sailed around the world without real charts because he was absurdly confident in his ability. He was an absolute boss and the fact that he lived past 25 is a miracle.

I wonder about the mentality of guys like Sir Francis Drake. What made them sail out and go beyond the limits of normal people? Some folks are unhappy sitting in one place, but come on. There’s something extra. An extra space in their souls for extra dreams. Something like that.

Maybe we all have certain types of extra dreams. I’d like to think that most people have had to go out into some unknown using ambition or balls or brilliance or bravery or whatever. Life is a crapshoot. We might as well take big chances. On the sunny side, the chances of failing and dying from scurvy or malaria are significantly less than they were in the time of Sir Francis Drake. I can’t stress that enough, people.

Cheers and see you after.