Slingshot

As a sailor, you need to harness the elements to drive your boat in the direction you want to go.  You don’t control the bearing of the wind, and you have to change the set of your sails and the direction of your boat to head as near as possible to the direction you want to go, at the best speed possible.  It’s a compromise that improves with your level of skill. The wind changes direction gradually, and when finally it moves across your bow, you need to tack.  But a boat does not tack subtly.  All sails must change side, all crew members must be involved, and even the best boat will need to move a full sixty degrees through the wind.  To keep going towards the same destination, a subtle course correction will not do. So it is with life.

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I think setting a path in life is a lot like sailing a boat.  Our boats are our collected skills, lifestyles, reputation, careers, seniority, characters and everything else that makes us capable of doing what we do to get ahead, or just get by, every day.  We use these attributes to succeed, or to improve our lot in life.  We use them the way that we do because we’ve figured out over time that this is how best to act in order to harness the forces around us – political, procedural, bureaucratic, social, hierarchical, and so on…

For most of us, our environment (the wind) changes very slowly during our careers and our lives.  Or perhaps the we change what we want out of life and the boats we’ve built are no longer set up to take us where we want to go.  Sooner or later comes the realisation that we need to make a course correction, and that this will involve changing the way our sails are set in order to better harness the forces in our environment.  By the time we figure this out, we have been sailing our boats for many years, making changes to the way we act and the forces that drive us is an intimidating prospect.

When the wind changes, you either turn with the wind and let it push you around, or you change the set of the sails so that you can go where you want by harnessing it differently.

When this need or opportunity arises, we put it off, out of a fear of the cost and the difficulty and the effort required.  In order to keep wind in our sails, we change course.  We stay the same and we let our environment choose the direction we’re heading in.  We let our circumstances push us around.  We accept a course that no longer leads us to the destination we had originally envisaged.  In effect, we direct our lives towards a compromise.  We let the wind push us rather than undertake the changes necessary to harness its new direction.

If we could adapt, then the change in the environment could be helpful instead of harmful.

The pressure of knowing we’re heading in the wrong direction is an irritant; a slow poison.  With every passing moment we are deviating further and further from the course we intended.  Getting closer and closer to an unfriendly shore.

On a large boat, a tack is not a small manoeuvre.  It involves changing the entire disposition of the sails, changing the pitch of the hull, swinging the boom across the center of the boat, working winches and turning the wheel. A poorly executed tack means you lose all forward momentum. At worse you can end up stalled, with your head into the wind, unable to maneuver your boat (known as being in irons). Properly executed, it’s a clean and beautiful exercise that improves your speed and/or your heading.

So if, in your life, you’ve rarely or never changed direction, why would you take the risk?  After all, it’s much easier to rationalize our new direction and claim that we chose it.  That it suits us.  That it’s what we want.

It is not enough to travel.  It is not enough to be good at your job.  It is not enough to be well regarded or respected, qualified, experienced or competent.  It is only enough to be happy.  It is only enough to be personally satisfied.  And to be personally satisfied, you have to be honest about what you want, and do away with the social influence that tells you what is an acceptable goal. When the direction doesn’t suit you, you need to change direction. To tack. Regardless of the fact that every boat in the race is still on the same heading. You need to acknowledge that either you are heading to a different destination, or that you have your own opinion of how best to get to the same place everyone else wants to go.

Your personal happiness project.  Your own path to clear waters and a white sandy beach, requires you to take a long hard look at where you are and which way you’re heading, and decide how to get to where you want. Then make the changes, however difficult, risky or intimidating, that are necessary to bring you there.

Lots of people out there will tell you to scuttle your ship and assume you’ll be better off swimming.  This is not true. Some people make it with these radical, sacrificial decisions, but they are the minority.  You are better off accepting the ship you are in, building on what you have, and using its strengths to find a new path.

Doing away with the metaphor for a moment : don’t quit your job, don’t arbitrarily throw away what makes you who you are today, and what puts bread on the table.  Don’t assume that life as a professional hobo will make you happier.  (That’s not tacking, that’s jumping overboard.) It’s unlikely to be true.  If you must change the way you make your living, then find the ways you can gradually make your income – your salary, your benefits, your bonus, your job security – redundant.  Replace them with something else, do it in your spare time, and when you have another boat to sail, then you can stop depending on the boat you’re on.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to tighten the mainsheet and prepare the jib in anticipation of my own course correction.  You might want to hold onto something.