“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has
the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
— André Gide

You might know this saying from one of those corny motivational pictures you can put on the wall. Not so for me.

I moved to Amsterdam on a whim, pursuing my newfound passion of filming. My family, friends and, by then, former colleagues, were convinced this was all part of a well-thought out plan to enrol at the Amsterdam Film and Television Academy. In reality, I simply woke up one day and decided it was time to quit*. With my not-so-extensive body of cinematic masterpieces, I was fairly certain not to get through the admission rounds (I was right). I left my job as a web designer nevertheless and followed my gut.

This difficult to master skill (to follow one’s gut) I acquired when I was backpacking: when you find yourself alone and completely broke in Australia as an 18-year old Dutch boy, you’ll learn to go by your instincts (you don’t have a choice, really). Back home it required an additional skill though.

Few people know when and how to truly go by their gut, so most will be scared shitless and declare you insane if you shake up your life without following logic reasoning. Better to come up with some convincing arguments, and all will admire your life-altering decision.

“A man always has two reasons for what he does
— a good one, and the real one.”

Arriving in Amsterdam in February of 2002, I had exactly one, one-off job confirmed. By presenting myself through their website as a freelance cameraman and editor, I got a gig with a company called DanceTrippin: filming hot girls at a classy house party for 4 nights**. How could I refuse? From there onwards, it was not hard to imagine myself jet-setting the world, waking up with champagne breakfasts every day and exclusively dating supermodels. We’ll get to that some other time.

The filming went well, and as it turned out, DanceTrippin was looking for a full-time video editor. In addition, they were part of a collective called “FeelsLikeFriday”, sharing offices with some other freelancers and small companies, all in the fields of internet and new media. There was plenty of work for me to pick up around there and before long I had set myself off in the direction I wanted, simply by diving into the unknown. Had I followed normal logic, I would have still been a junior web designer in my hometown.

Which leaves us with the proverb we started with.

Not only was the FeelsLikeFriday collective a great source of work, the offices were also host to a never-ending parade of fascinating people. There was Will, who retired from supermodelling to start DanceTrippin. Pablo, the film-obsessed, hyper-passionate artist and Pete, the father of the collective who truly rode the roller-coaster of the first Dot-com Bubble. And then there was the legend of Simon Cavendish.

To me, Simon was more like a mythical figure, known through stories told by Pete. In short: he left the UK under a shroud of mystery in the early nineties, ending up homeless and broke in Amsterdam. From there he somehow managed to co-found the first Dutch internet provider called “Euronet” together with Arko van Brakel, propelling them both into the league of the superrich only a few years later, when they sold the company to France Telecom for 27 million euros (before the Dot-com Crash). Rags to riches, literally***.

Aged 43, Simon died in 2005 in Cambodia. Working on an in memoriam website Pete initiated, I learned about Simon’s favourite saying. I had unknowingly lived by it all that time and have taken it to heart ever since:

“You cannot discover new oceans unless you have
the courage to lose sight of the shore.”****

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* Some nuance here: there was of course a subconscious “itch” lingering below the surface for a long time. But as with many subconscious matters, you can’t always articulate them and they will suddenly “pop” to the surface.

** It was the opening weekend of Hotel Arena in Amsterdam. The videos can still be seen on DanceTrippin: Bob Sinclar @ Hotel Arena and Jani @ Hotel Arena.

*** Obviously this paragraph doesn’t do Simon’s life and all the other people involved justice, but for the point of this post it’s not possible to go in deeper. Maybe one day down the road we can revisit his life’s story.

**** Simon preferred “you” over “man”, as in the original version from André Gide.

Other references

• Header image credits: “Alone”, Flickr photo by α is for äpΩL †, under Creative Commons license. No changes made to original picture.
• More info on André Gide on Wikipedia.
• The quote “A man always has two reasons for what he does — a good one, and the real one.” has been attributed to several people (most notably J.P. Morgan and Theodore Roosevelt). Quote Investigator has some excellent and extensive background details on this: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/26/two-reasons/

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Related postings:
How to Follow Your Gut?
Post #7, 2014.10.18 | Roll With the Punches