What’s your dream life you’re not living right now?
Is it like mine?
Living in luxury with a view of the ocean?
That life is typically merely met only in either our daydreams or on nightly delta waves.
But not for one woman. She’s living that life – not on delta pillow waves or Delta plane waves but on boat ridden waves of the actual ocean – compliments of Crystal Serenity cruiseliner. Every day, this bish’s got a gorgeous view of the sea. She rarely even de-boats to see places anymore, ‘cause she’s seen ‘em all. “I stopped counting after 100,” says the woman – paying $164k a year to perpetually live at one with aqueous nature, “The crew members bend over backwards to keep me happy. Some are almost like family now. If they don’t have what I want, they get it. Even if they have to buy it off the ship or make it to my specific needs.”
Are you rolling your emerald eyes into a shade migraine yet?
Before we collectively start growing knitted eyebrows and loading up our mental machine gunned envy to direct jealousy bullets at her, maybe the fact that she’s 86 years old will help soften this into more of a “Aw, well that’s kinda sweet” tale. Because when Lee Wachtstetter (that’s her name) was left behind by her husband, she decided she wasn’t gonna die in Florida like the rest of those quasi-ambulatory prunes that comprised the perimeter of her existence. At her daughters advice, she sold that shiz (all ten acres) and now permanently resides on a cruise. And at the advice of her husband’s deathbed suggestion (“Don’t stop cruisin’”), she’s been a citizen of the sea for the past seven years.
Now, whether this tale makes you green-eyed or just green-faced and grabbing for Dramamine, there’s a lesson.
(When isn’t there?)
One that doesn’t require a heroic LeoCaprio (that’s my new word; pronounced: LEE*oh cuh*PREE*oh)
It doesn’t even require a dying lover’s suggestion, either.
Kiss yo’ own hand, gurrrl. And then wave it at the shore (sore?) losers.
And, finally, it doesn’t require youth, either. “Keep cruisin’” is simple and excellent advice on two levels. The first is in the cents sense: the literal Elizabeth Gilbert save-up-every-nickel-and-travel-carelessly-when-you’re-old-and-alone concept. Why not travel the world before you die? Why not enjoy retirement? And, actually, the second’s not mutually exclusive to that idea of enjoying your golden years fully: “keep on cruisin’” is a lot like “keep on truckin’”. Life will ebb and flow. People (husband in her case) will come and leave us. So we keep going and focus on the good things past and coming before we leave as well. Knowing that we all go back to the land helps us enjoy life’s ocean a bit more – and all of its ebbs and flows and tranquil in-betweens. Whether we can afford to live on a luxury liner doing that or not is irrelevant.
’cause this ship goes down for all of us eventually.
Might as well enjoy the band during your descent.