Another Monday's Voyage

Today was Columbus Day. Every now and again they blindsided me with one of these Monday holidays I had completely forgotten about and gave the kids a day off from school.

Columbus Day is when we celebrate the fact that Columbus sailed east, hoping to circumnavigate the globe and hit the East Indies. As luck would have it, there were other bodies of land in the way, something he hadn't counted on at all. Columbus managed to find some Caribbean islands which he thought were off the coast of Asia.

I think the most intriguing part of the story is that they just didn't know how big the Earth was. They were all pretty sure it was round, but Columbus really had no clue that there was an entire continent between Spain and China. Maybe if he had known how impossible it would be for him to reach his destination, he never would have started out on such a journey.

I think that's always the way. Life is a long and hard voyage. We have to believe we can make it or we are doomed. It may be that our journey doesn't always take us to where we thought we were going, but we discover some wonderful things where we do end up. The most important thing is to make a start. You just have to load up the ship and sail.