Sailing up wind.

I am not a sailor, although I have enormous respect for those who are. Ever since I was a child, I could not figure out how a boat could travel up wind. It was easy to understand how one sails down wind. Opening a sail and letting the wind take us where it will is easy and takes little thought. Sailing up wind, however, is much more difficult and involves tacking back and forth, requiring thought and practice.

As I try to navigate my way through life, I know there are two directions into which I can sail. I can go down wind, which takes little effort or thought. All I have to do is open my sails and let the wind take me where it will. The other choice is to sail up wind, which is harder and requires thought and practice. Both use the same wind, but end up in completely different places.

For me, the wind is life and the fears I so often feel when it arrives. I can let the breeze take me down wind, or I can learn to use the wind to pull me in a different direction. One is easy, the other difficult, but I am convinced up wind is the “more excellent” destination.

People describe the two destinations in a variety of ways - our will and God’s, our false selves and true, our being asleep and awake – but the image of sailing serves to describe the challenge we face no matter how you describe the destinations. To open our sails and let the wind blow us down wind is easy and takes little thought, just like living in our own wills or in our false selves. To head in the other direction is more difficult and requires thought and practice, just like trying to live in God’s will or in our true selves. The wind is the same, but how we decide to use it is not.

I still don’t understand sailing, but I believe it points to an important truth about making my way through life.