Adrift

 

Sometimes, we find ourselves adrift in spite of our best efforts. There can be a myriad of reasons for it. Even with all the discipline and all the want – the need - to do those things that we have outlined for our day, or our week...we can find ourselves feeling lost and drifting, managing little more than staying afloat. (Yes, I was listening to watery music and rain when I wrote this.)

There are times when it is life's circumstance that takes us out with the tides. An unexpected change – good or bad – a birth, a death, a new job, a pandemic, the change of seasons...Sometimes it is as little (or as much) as having so much that feels like it needs doing that we are just bobbing in the waves, overwhelmed by the surf and unable to find a direction to give us a place to start.

Often the only remedy is to pick a direction at random and strike out with a strong stroke, hoping that a familiar landmark will appear and the waters will shallow as we swim. There are times, though, where the thing we really need to do is just lie back and breathe. Just to float. Let the current take us where it will. Times where we need to rest and gather our strength. Let the fear and doubt wash over us, until it has passed. Focus on the small things, staying afloat, breathing, just being a speck on the seas for a while. Then, once there is breath in our lungs and strength in our arms we can look around and see where those currents have taken us. The time of rest and gathering might just have provided a new perspective – a glimpse of land, perhaps, so that we don't have to strike out blindly. If we can't see land yet, we might remember how to watch the birds and orient the most likely direction, or cast for a scent on the wind to guide us.

Sometimes being adrift is where we need to be to find direction.