09.01.18

A friend recently asked me what my favourite documentaries are..my head exploded, there are so many. I am into art history, sports, activism, food, phenomena, crime. Here are a couple I have seen so far in no particular order of favourites.  

Documentary film: NO.1  MAIDENTRIP (2014)

Nearly eight months after my own Western European tour, I was reunited with two of my Irish aunts over the weekend and have been trapped in travel nostalgia ever since. My aunts came to visit my mom who hasn’t seen them in a few years now. My brother Colin and sister Mary Cate saw them last year around this time. I said my farewells to the aunties shortly after the New Year (which, yes I know, I still have to write about).

For now, I’m just sharing a preview of my most recent travel indulgence (thank you, Netflix): a moving, inspirational documentary half-made by the main character Laura Dekker, the now-16-year-old Dutch girl who sailed the world in 519 days -- alone. SHE is brave, strong, passionate, fearless and wise beyond her teenage years. 

While only a 1.5 hour documentary of Laura’s many many more hours at sea, the picture portrays a truly admirable young woman who sees life beyond the superficial aspects of modernity, including many of the Western social norms and often limiting expectations many of us place on ourselves. She questions, provokes, challenges. What is “success”? Who defines it? What is happiness and loneliness? What is time and does it matter?

I don’t know how Laura stayed sane and mentally silenced all the noise -- as I tried to many times on my own journey -- for over a year alone on a boat in some of the most dangerous waters in the world. To be in her shoes, I would if I knew how to sail. But that thought didn’t stop me from smiling and dreaming up the next big journey in my head as I watched this young, curious spirit take the bull by the horns and live out her life passion and chase after her dream.