Waves of life

Have you ever been on a boat ride?

One that springs to mind for me is a trip in the Mediterranean. The sun was shining and the sky a brilliant and vibrant blue colour, without a single cloud to be seen.

We had been bobbing along on the waves when all of a sudden we hit a swell. It came out of nowhere, possibly from a larger cruise ship or freight vessel, and the boat started swaying wildly. I usually love boats, but this made me feel quite uneasy, particularly because it had come out of nowhere.

I was relieved to reach the shore after a few more bouts of being tipped up and down!

There’s a quote from the book Little Women, that has inspired all kinds of art work and often appears when searching for inspiration quotes or blogs; “Lovely weather so far; I don’t know how long it will last, but I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship”.

We can be floating along in our boat of life quite happily, with calm water and clear beautiful weather, when a storm either gradually brews in the distance or roars upon us out of nowhere. It threatens to capsize our boat and dump us unceremoniously in the water. Sometimes it can even feel like someone has stolen the oars!

But these are waves. They come and go. We can either be like a surfer and learn to ride them, doing a “dance with the waves” and knowing that eventually they will subside. Or we can let the storm thoroughly soak us while it is passing through, being thoroughly miserable in the process.

One thing is for sure, we can’t stop the storms of life. But perhaps we can choose how we react to them.