Today’s Your Day, Mel Fisher!
“There is…the strange feeling of achieving a very specific measure of success ( as defined by society), and being surprised that it doesn’t feel like you imagined it would/should….I think there needs to be much more discussion on what success means…and it’s different for every one of us.”-Kevin M.
A friend left that comment on my business Facebook page, and it struck a chord inside of me, as I was looking through my (overloaded) Google calendar, realizing that Monday, July 20, 2015, was Mel Fisher Day. In case you’re of a certain age, or simply don’t remember, Mel Fisher spent 16+ years of his life searching for shipwrecked treasure until July 20, 1985, when he discovered the 1622 wreck of the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha. Within that wreck was loot estimated at $450 million dollars. Not bad, right?
But before you get jealous, realize that for decades, Mel Fisher went out, every single day, looking for something that most people believed either didn’t exist, or would never be found. Many people considered him a crank, or worse. How many years of hard times did he undergo, even as he kept to his motto, “Today’s the Day?” Think about how many years he must have spent, wondering if he was crazy, wondering if he was wasting his life, and the lives of his family. Think about how many millions of times he must have woken up at 3am, the hour of the wolf, in a cold sweat wondering what the hell he was doing with life. And then, he found the treasure. He won. He committed to his dream and his dream paid off in a big way.
Not to get too disgustingly corny here, but we’re all, in various ways, looking for our own various treasures. Some of us will find what they’re seeking, others won’t, and some of the people who achieve what they think they wanted, might be surprised, meanwhile some people who “fail,” might end up feeling kinda relieved. Treasure is a funny thing. Treasure doesn’t have $450 million dollars worth of gold and jewelry, after all. Treasure can also be the confidence and determination to commit to your joy.
Just remember that nowadays, people in Key West honor Mel Fisher Day, because before Mel struck gold, there were countless dark, lonely days when nobody gave a damn about him, but he refused to give up! #GetToWork
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