Helen Besoe: A year out of the rat-race? Yes, please!

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

A year out of the rat-race? Yes, please!

Stuck on a remote island with plenty of food, water, and a companion... Stress-free life... at first I was temped to say that I'd tell the rescue ship to get lost! Or maybe just run a letter to my family telling them to come visit me sometime. That seems reasonable, right?

BUT... as much as I daydream about getting away from it all... as much as I'd like to just make the whole world disappear sometimes... I don't think I'd want to stay there permanently. It sounds mad, I know.

Here's the thing though.

1) I think cabin fever would set in after a while.

2) I think I would start to miss all the people I'd left behind after a while. I'm not really the type to get homesick, but I would wonder how everyone was doing and whatnot and it'd be nice to be able to get in touch with and visit them.

3) A year on a remote island... Wouldn't you want to share your experiences? I think there might be a book in that!

4) We always wanna get away from the rat-race when we're stuck in the middle of it, but once you're away, I think you might get bored after a while. I think a year of that life would definitely not be a problem, but once it got to five years... ten? Nothing changes, no excitement... always the same old routine... wouldn't you start to go mad eventually? I mean, I suppose the companion would help with that, but that only works for so long before the cabin fever sets in.

I think my ideal situation would be to have my food, water, and companion as well as a few books, some empty journals/notebooks, and plenty of writing implements. When the rescue ship arrived... I'd tell them to check back in on me in TWO years. I think two years is a good amount of time.

Now, if there were other people on the island... some native tribe or something... people I didn't know, people from another culture... well, then I think I could quite happily stay there for five or ten years! (It would be nice to have some sort of communication with the outside world though. I don't need telephones or Internet, as long as I can get a letter out, then I'd stay.)

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