Smaller Monsters (Echo 2017)

May 27, 2017

Facing one’s fears and accepting life’s challenges doesn’t make them smaller monsters, it just makes the suffering one must go through positive. Like cleaning a wound, one’s fears will fester if one does not face them and clean the wound it has made in one’s heart. To face these fears alone, without guidance or support, whether they be large or small, can feel like moving a mountain. When one is surrounded by the love and support from people who have an overwhelming passion for life, anything can seem possible. Here at Sail Caribbean this is the experience that a camper can choose to have if they embrace the community that is offered here.

The overwhelming majority of one’s life’s trials and joys are directly affected by the people one surrounds one’s self with. And to find those people can be like a ship seeing the lights of safe harbor through a storm. Too often we get comfortable with pushing aside our fears, but we are never the happier for it. It’s important early on in life to find it within yourself to make it a point of making your fears your friends and not your enemies, realizing that overcoming your fears will only make you a stronger and better person. To be surrounded by wild glorious nature, just waiting to swallow your heart, and to have your friends and teachers right along side you, ready to pick you up — that is Sail Caribbean. This is my experience at Sail Caribbean and I hope to make this the experience of every camper that I may encounter.

Andrew D, Echo student, age 20, Eugene, OR

Photos by Andrew Dyer