Life is hard. No matter what people want to tell you, parts of life suck, and you eventually have to deal with it. You deal with it, or you numb yourself until you die. Those are, generally, the two options.
In the Shipyard
Think of yourself as a boat and life as the ocean. We are born/created in dry dock. We have yet to feel the water beneath our bow. Our childhood and adolescence are when we’re built and tested. When we first feel the water, it isn’t in the ocean, it’s at the dock when we’re first lowered into the water or the dry dock is flooded to test whether we leak or not. This is done with our parents holding our hands as we cross the street or practice driving in an empty parking lot. It’s all done in relative safety. It’s only once our seaworthiness is tested that we’re towed into the ocean.
Our parents try to teach us everything we’ll need to know to succeed in life, but things change, and the life our parents knew rarely apply to the current day. They’ve tested us the best they can, but the ocean is the ultimate test of whether we sail or sink. Like the towboat, they get us to a point where we can take over without fear of running aground right off the bat, but from here on out, it’s our decision on which direction we go and what tools we use.
Setting Sail
I’ve never sailed the ocean, but I know it’s not easy. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. There are currents, trade winds, storms, hurricanes, fog, debris, and a host of other dangers on the open ocean. We can go 100 miles in one direction only to run into a storm we didn’t see coming or realize we went in the opposite direction we intended to go. We know it’s hard, but we hardly ever realize how hard it actually is until we do it.
Some people go through life staying close to the shore they know. They might only venture out a little bit, but they seek comfort in the port that they know. Other ports are nicer and others are complete shit holes, but they never find out which ones because they take very little risks. They pretty much know what to expect from day to day. If a storm is on the horizon, they stay docked.
Other people see those storms and race into them, challenging themselves to see just how far they can go. The storm is something to be conquered, even though it’s more of surviving the storm than conquering it. These people will sail anywhere, anytime to seek the thrill of adventure. They might never return to the dock they once called home.
Most people are somewhere in the middle. Most people might try a new direction or find a new port, but they will return to their home port when they want. They might weather some smaller storms, but they do so because they have no other choice. They aren’t looking for the hurricanes to prove their seaworthiness.
Surviving the Storm
The true tests in life are when there is a mechanical failure or a storm damages the ship that is our life. How do we respond? Do we turn to rum (pharmaceuticals) to numb our discomfort and just drift on the currents, do we limp to the nearest port for a shipwright to repair our damage, or do we repair our boat ourselves with tools we brought aboard and continue on?
Numbing ourselves and surrendering to the currents is easy, but it doesn’t get us anywhere. If we somehow make it to shore, our boat is even more damaged by the rocks beneath the waves. If we manage not to sink, we run aground and are stuck wherever we end up.
Depending on how damaged our boat is, we might have the option to limp to the nearest port. They might have a skilled shipwright who can fix us back to pristine condition, but they might not have all of the material needed, or the “ship fixer guy” might be a drunk with one arm. We don’t know until we get there. The repairs might leave us in a better condition or we might have a botched patch job that leaks. We just don’t know.
Repairing Our Ship: DIY Edition
Repairing our own vessel is the hardest option, and it requires the most tools. Without the tools, we can’t do it, and not every tool is right for every job. A hammer isn’t very good at fixing a sail just as a needle and thread aren’t good for fixing a busted deck, but we have to have both just in case. Acquiring these tools takes time an effort. Some people race out of their docks before they get all the tools, impatient to separate from their parents and sail before they’re ready. Some parents fail to inform their children that they need certain tools, or their parents lack the same tools that are needed for each repair.
A torn sail can be repaired, but the stitching of the repair will be seen, just as a scar on a wound. Does it make the sail any less effective? Arguably, no, but the lessons learned from repairing that sail are incalculable just as the lessons we learn from our scars. A busted deck can be repaired. New planks can be put down to replace worn or broken ones. Can we tell? Of course! The ships that never leave dock will always look new. The battle-hardened ships will always show their battle scars. Which ship would you rather be on, one that has never been tested or one that has seen the worst and survived to proudly sail again?
The Lesson
Even if we do everything right, we might not always succeed. If you’re sailing from Europe, threading the needle to the Caribbean Islands is difficult. If you miss it, it is faster and easier to go up the coast of the United States than try to sail into the trade winds. We might have every tool to repair our ship and navigate from point A to point B, but we need the experience and knowledge to be a master sailor of our own lives.
This is a life worth living! Take a chance, make mistakes, and learn from them. None of us are infallible. We have to accept it and continue on with our journey, honing our skills and gathering knowledge and wisdom along the way. The best thing is when we find someone to co-captain our ship or combine vessels into an intimate fleet. Sailing the ocean with another vessel is a lot less lonely and can provide a lot more opportunity for exploration.
That’s life in a metaphor. Is life worth living if we never leave home or numb ourselves and relent to everything? No! We do not need to recklessly steer towards the storms, but we should be prepared for the ones we cannot avoid. We might come out unscathed, or we could be beaten to a pulp. The biggest question is when we are beaten down by life, do we find our tools and fix ourselves, or do we give up? We might have to improvise and create new tools, but we are capable of fixing our own ships (lives), but it is going to be a lot of hard work.
The Future
In life, there will be setbacks, and tools will break, but if we want to be our best selves, there really isn’t another option. We can never find another ship and become a fleet if we cannot fix our own ships and continue to sail. Even though some are capable, no one wants to sail the ocean alone. It’s a lot more pleasurable to share the experience with someone you trust and love.
Looking towards the future with our soulmate keeps us from losing ourselves in our mistakes and our scars. We stop looking out our noticeable patch job on our sails, and we start looking at our partner in their boat and the seas ahead.
