It Was Always My Choice to Make
It Was Always My Choice to Make
A ship at sea. Date: January 14, 2018 Author: Live Your Wage
I’m in the bowels of a large ocean liner steaming across the open sea. My heart is pounding and my arms ache. I’ve been shoveling coal from giant reservoirs into the furnace. Me and dozens of workers are in a giant boiler room and have been shoveling non-stop for 10 hours. (1)
The burning coal provides the steam that turns the 8 giant 30-foot pistons just behind our massive boiler room. The pistons in turn rotate the two enormous propellers just aft of the ship. The more coal, the more steam. The more steam, the more pressure to turn the pistons and apply power to the propellers – and the faster we get to our destination.
But I don’t know where our destination is? The captain from his perch in the pilot house has voiced on more than one occasion that the destination is a tropical island of unbelievable beauty. The passengers have all paid good money to visit this place.
And to stay on schedule the ship must travel as fast as possible. Requests for more coal and more steam are a common refrain from the pilot house.
So I dig and shovel. Day and night. (2)
Finally the ship arrives. Calls for more coal cease. I can feel the ship slowing as we come into port. I hear the call for passengers to disembark.
But I am not offered that option. I am not a passenger.
My orders are to transfer more coal from the main depot in another part of the ship to the large reservoirs in the boiler room to make ready for the next part of the journey.
The task takes most of the day. I never glimpse a window. I never get a peek at the glorious island just outside, let alone set foot in the soft sands.
In fact, the scenery for me is no different here than when we were in the middle of the ocean or even back at our original port. I’d be hard pressed to prove that any change in location had occurred at all.
Abruptly I hear the captain call for engine preparations as the passengers begin returning to the ship. We’ll be leaving port in a matter of minutes. That’s when two very powerful revelations erupt within me.
First, if I never get to see or experience the destination, then the destination doesn’t actually matter.
Sure, it matters to the passengers who are paying good money to get there, and those wages trickle down into my salary, which I value greatly. But does the invisible destination impact or change me in any way? Would it be any different if the destination was a polluted backwater with overgrown brush and rocky beaches?
If you never see the destination, the destination loses all meaning.
The fact that the destination is a wonderful tropical island is just a means of getting passengers to pay money to board the ship. To me, the destination no longer matters. Just the money.
The second revelation is I realize what moves the ship.
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