Stay the Course

joyeux

Some days are definitely not joyeux (the name of this boat). Some days the soft underbelly of our hull hits the sand and we sink, because the tide changed, the sand shifted, and now we have no choice but to jump ship, call an Uber, and find our way back to Brooklyn.

We think we're the only ones ever on a sinking ship, but the stories are the same. Someone gets sick or someone leaves. But there were clues - charts, patterns - because the tide is always changing, and the sand always shifting, so the ship is always sinking. It's also always floating. Our lives fall apart and get put back together simultaneously. But our blind spots protect the wound that hasn't healed or the insight that hasn't occurred yet, and the familiar dysfunction provides more comfort than a change of anything.

So we stay the course until we're ready to meet ourselves with kindness and compassion, until we've learned how to speak and how to listen, or until we finally just jump ship, call the Uber and go back home to our Brooklyn to face the heart of the issue that has likely been here longer than we've been alive, but we tend to that wound as best we can... until predictably the next tidal change rolls in.