Lights, please?

A candle lights up again at Jimbaran Beach, Bali, 2007.

I am confronted with new fears each time we ventured out to unknown waters for expeditions or explorations. Would this be the instance we had taken on something larger than ourselves? Have we prepared for the possible, plan for the improbable, and think about the worst?

It is nerve-wrecking spending days imagining the worst case scenarios, finding answers, and keeping an even keel of sanity and reasons about things. Am I worried about our transport overturning on the dangerous mountain route? Or should I be more worried about unexploded bombs in the riverbeds? Should I planned for snakes? What's improbable?

It is hard when one cannot be more positive or negative about such things. It is hard to distill the facts and make a right decision without fear or favour, but when unknowns naturally creates fear and hazy thinking.

Some moments, I froze in doubt. I was constantly tempted to just close my eyes.

Before, I have met some who shared with me their 'cocksure kayaking fears' of drownings, of shark attacks, the mud of mangroves, the storms... they frightened themselves thinking about wasting away somewhere on the ocean forlorned ... helpless.

Such kayak-in-the-ocean romance is unlikely to happen, I told them. But even if it did, please not judge from a distance but urged yourselves closer. For in the depth of the kayaker's eyes, in the last days, there are still joys that these last days are spent on a sea somewhere, looking at the sunset, close and everywhere the one true love... So it will come with a romantic ending as well.

One of my favorite books, and one I returned to constantly to keep an even keel, is Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World.

"Where there is doubt, there is freedom."