“I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship,” Louisa May Alcott.  At the end of the day this is what it’s all about: learning to sail the waters of our lives.  When we are brave enough to jump off of the ship someone else is the captain of, we find ourselves in tough waters. It takes time to learn to swim.  When we wash up on land, we can begin to construct our own ship.  When we learn to build our own ship from the foundation of who we are, it can withstand anything, it can withstand the toughest waters out there.  It not only survives, but thrives and carries us through the waters until we get to the next destination.  And then it continues to carry us throughout our lives.  That is the magic of building our own lives: we know what we are made of, what we can handle, what we want with us and what we need.  And so too, that is the magic of learning to take the helm: we learn we can take ourselves anywhere, that our lives are our own—all the other players, no matter how good or bad are temporary—so that we are the only ones truly capable of deciding what we want and where we want to go.  Choose to do it, to trust ourselves.  We took enough time trusting other people to direct and navigate us, if we can give that power away, and if we can waste our energy doing what others expect of us, then imagine what we can do when we harness that power and energy for ourselves. 

I read something the other day talking about helping people in rough seasons of their lives.  I started thinking about these rough seas and the beauty of knowing how to navigate them is that we have the ability to help others.  We’ve all been through the storms, so we can now turn ourselves into the port for someone else.  What a beautiful gift to share with the world, with anyone we meet.  I haven’t always created a safe harbor for myself, in fact there are times I was the destructor.  I’ve learned that even through those moments, there are lessons that can help people because we are all destructive to some degree.  We have to destroy the idea of what we know in order to become who we are.  Sometimes even a dream has to die in order to let a new life unfold.  As we unfurl the layers of who we are and develop new skills, we may see that what we thought we wanted isn’t really what we wanted, or needed for that matter.  But as we learn to direct ourselves, we can help others find their way through similar experiences.  Sometimes I think that’s the point of rough seas: to be able to show others how to get through it.  We are evolutionary creatures and it serves that we would help someone do better. 

We can’t fear the storms of life.  There are times if we wait for the storm to pass we would simply miss out on life.  Life is meant to be lived—that doesn’t mean it’s easy, but we can learn to appreciate that sometimes we get the tough experiences to make it a little easier for someone else.  Life doesn’t have to be some traumatizing thing, some terrifying ride that feels like we are constantly dropping to the Earth.  We can manage those emotions and find the point in all of it.  Again, we are expansive, evolutionary creatures so the whole point is to grow.  We need growth, we need variety, we need creativity—and we are meant to cocreate with this universe.  The truth is that sometimes we can’t figure out what we want or what we need to do until we have to navigate some tricky circumstances.  It isn’t about worth or punishment or being dealt a crappy lot in life—sometimes that lot is actually so big and so broad that we need to have a deep variety of experiences to be able to cover the breadth of who we need to help.  I’ve been fortunate enough to witness people come through the darkest of days and I’ve been through some fairly dark days myself—for a long time I still didn’t feel equipped to talk about it.  But the direction of my course has always been to share this, to help others share their stories as well.  If it’s destined, what is there to fear?  As long as we can see something beyond the horizon, we know that there is more to the story.  Take the helm and stay true—keep going.