Better Than That

by Captain Trevor Jackson

So, we play this little musical show on the last night of each trip. The boat has a band of sorts: guitar, singer, drummer, and backup singers/dancers. All the crew pitch in. It’s a ritual and a highlight.

Post-gig, there is another ritual in that the drummer and I head to the front deck like a pair of Elvises and “debrief” the gig, so to speak — what went well, what didn’t, etc. Last night we did neither. It was complete silence until one of us chimed in with a corker of a question:

“If the whole human race needed to leave Earth and head to Mars, never to return, what would we take and what would we leave behind?”

Now, sitting on the front deck under the Far North tropical night skies can occasionally prompt questions like this, but this one was a doozie and needed some serious thought.

“Well, you’d need to take the means to create food and water, obviously; shelter from the elements — it can’t be too hot or too cold — and, of course, the breathable atmosphere may need some attention.” I can’t imagine that, on an urgent dash to save ourselves, we would be too concerned with much else.

In fact, one might imagine that almost all of the things we concern ourselves with on a daily basis would be placed in the “leave it back on Earth” basket. Things like cars, guitars, scuba diving, the Pepsi v Coke argument, democracy, and Netflix — a random selection, of course, but you get the drift. We don’t *need* any of those things; they just make life a whole lot more interesting and fun. And they are a constant reminder that we have evolved well beyond what would have been a never-ending cycle of chasing those three old chestnuts: food, water, and shelter.

The whole idea of having to leave all that stuff behind made me realise, for a moment, what we would stand to lose if we don’t start taking care of our backyard. We would literally have evolved full circle back into cave men.

I don’t know about you, but I always thought we were better than that.