When the wind quits, you row.
A lot of folks will wall you or themselves with sandbags of “can’t”. In the moment of tension and difficulty rather than being solution oriented, they throw hands up and suggestions out because….
there are unknowns.
Let’s not ask and let’s not tell.
But what happens really when a situation changes direction- do you all sit in the boat arguing how you ought to have set out this many days before so you would be that far ahead? Do you stand staring out at the water hoping for a poof of breeze that is not the heaving breath of the person beside you lamenting it all?
Or do you say, okay context has changed, action has changed. Here’s what we are going to do. I think the folks that are strongest in times of hardship are the ones who walk through the moments with no defined expectations of the path or the manner in which it will be traveled. They are the ones who focus on “go” rather than “how come this happened” or “oh dear this is too hard, can we think about it tomorrow?”
Doers.
“Adventure means risking something, and it is only when we are doing that, that we know what a splendid thing life is and how well it can be lived. The person who never dares, never does; the person who never risks, never wins. It is far better to venture and fail than to lie on a rug like a sleepily purring cat. Only fools laugh at failure; wise people laugh at the lazy and the too contented and at those who are so timid that they dare undertake nothing.”A. Gerboult
“The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live.” Leo Buscaglia
If you think about it, of all the time there is to be spent we only get one brief little sliver. It’s all our own but compare the years of a life with how long some buildings have stood and let an ongoing series of different voices march through. In that time you have to do something and to be alive how actively do you choose?
You could spend the days and the hours watching television and being annoyed with the boredom of work, of family, of suburbia and of the lines at the grocery store. You could choose to spend years half awake and let your mind become atrophied against energy against passion or intensity.
Or you could choose not to engage in those commitments and instead yourself accountable for living life in an alive way. The kind where you talk with people and find moments and relationships somewhat precious.
Where you know there is no return option for years, months, days or even just an hour that you chose to pour down the drain. Unlike a lost piece of jewelry that you might get from the neck of the sink pipe at the bend, time goes straight down the tube to the past.
