These young people are not tourists on a pleasure cruise- they are a selected elite, called from around the country for an important academic conference- which included lunch, certificates, and a boat ride at the end of the day.
There was a lot of pointless chatter going on around me on deck, but then I saw this group- rapt, silent, staring out to sea. They seemed somehow emblematic of something, I wasn’t sure what- so I took this picture to see what they looked like pictured, and here they are.
As they stand here on the ship’s bow, parting the waters, looking into the bright distance, they seem to feel themselves on top of the world. Here they stand, at their young age- selected, celebrated, wined and dined, honored by their elders as equals, with futures as boundless as the sea.
For them, this is a peak moment, one of those marks along the road always to be remembered. But it is, after all, only a moment, and their feeling of having mastered the world is largely an illusion.
For them, the world is a fixed, static place to move in freely, to grow and develop into what they want to be. They are too young to have seen any real change around them, or any real loss. Their families and close friends are all still alive. The society around them has remained constant throughout their lives. Only small details have changed.
But other people, people twice their age and more, remember another world- one with the same names on the towns and rivers, but completely different in appearance and feeling from this one now. They themselves haven’t changed much, except in appearance; they are still the people they always were. But the world around them has changed so much that they often feel like strangers in it.
The young people in the picture- they’re on the voyage out, happy and confident. But what of the voyage that lasts, not for an afternoon, but for twenty years, forty years? Everyone takes that trip; and when they return, come ashore, and look around, they may find themselves the same- in a place they no longer recognize.
At this moment they see themselves speeding swiftly through great spaces- but in reality, they are only here on the bow, standing still. Only the boat is moving, away from the familiar shore they know.