Jessica Watson: All The Hype.

If you have been in Australia, or were reading news closely linked to Australia in the past few months, you'd have watched on the news about a 16 year old sailing the world solo for the past 7 months.

As much as I would applaud her achievement and her effort, I certainly with this writer agree that she should not have undertaken such a task at the age of 16.

I  mean, why 16? Why not 17, or 19, or 21 for that matter? Why does it have to be when she was 16?

Allowing an underage to sail at the age of 16, by herself, simply reveals that there is much more beneath the scene than we think. Who will take responsibility should something have gone wrong during her solo sojourn around the world?

If I had a daughter/son, I would not allow my child to undertake such a dangerous solo journey at such a young age. If it was because she really wanted to do out of her own sheer ambition and desire, her parents should have had the wisdom to wait till she was older to allow her to do so.

Does it make that much more difference if she had waited till she was older to complete the mission? It would have been better to sail at an older age, that the World Speed Sailing Record Council would have recognised her achievements.

Just because she was able to complete the mission successfully, it does not excuse the fact that her parents were not discerningly wise in monitoring their children's course of action. Of course, there are many out there who said that they will support her mission, and add the ball of "girl power" nonsense to it.

As the interviews revealed, her parents were checking on her every movement and had sleepless nights for days. Even at my age (I'm in my early 30s now, my parents still worry just as much for me).  I really have to wonder the state that her parents have to go through with the amount of stress & worry when she was out alone at sea.

There really has to be a balance of wisdom between knowing when is the right time to do something.

It's not just persisting in pursuing your dreams blindly with no regards to the people around you, you know?

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