Trim Your Sails
How can it be that two boats, powered only by the wind, travel in very different directions– one sailing easterly and the other clipping along westerly? Same winds, same currents, different courses.
Clearly, neither boat is drifting aimlessly along. One is under the control of a skipper who is triangulating the prevailing wind against the desired course and holding the sail and the tiller to draw the craft along as he wishes. Reading the currents, he tacks this way and that with every gust, ensuring that the winds and the waves work for him, and not against him. Meanwhile, the other skipper, harnessing the exact same wind and exact same current, sails her craft in the other direction. Yes, I get the trigonometry, but in my mind the whole business remains a miracle.
We’re all like the little boats on the sea. We don’t get to choose the wind or dictate the current– we take what we get. We can drift before the winds and the waves, wherever they may take us, or we can work the sails and the rudder and go where we determine.
So, where are you going with the winds and seas you’ve been given?