Smooth sailing never made a skilled sailor

I was talking to a client about how our difficulties serve to give us more depth, and she came out with "Smooth sailing never made a skilled sailor."  

I loved it!  I'd never heard it before and she couldn't remember who said it,  but her father used to quote it often.   So after she left I looked it up.   Most commonly attributed to Franklin D Roosevelt,  32nd President of the United States,  who lead the US during WWII.

And there is always the idea that we don't want to battle difficulties - that we want smooth sailing,  we want things easy,  of course we do!  But our greatest life lessons,  they come from the difficult times,  and they test and temper us,  forging our steel to strength and sharpness.    Easy to say after the battle is over and the lesson learnt.  Harder to see while the storm is raging.  But also good to remember while the storm is raging -  life is change and the better I get at sailing through it,  the better my life will become. 

The scariest card

No one wants to draw the Death card.  Even if you know nothing about the tarot, one look at that card,  and you feel deep unease.

But Tarot is a subtle guidance,  and death doesn't mean death is coming for you.  It means change is coming,  deep change,  transformative change.  I wrote a blog on butterflies and change and the death card in 2012 (which just goes to show how old this blog is!) and now I'm thinking of it again.

I used to tell clients that I was thinking of getting a word tattooed on each of my wrists - the right would say LIFE and the left would say CHANGE.  Life, Change.  Life, Change.  Just to remind me and them that all life involves change.  And often is it the resistance to change,  as opposed to the change itself,  that can hurt us the most.  (I couldn't find images of that,  but I did find lots of heart beats,  whose very syncopation says that all life involves the heart moving and changing beat,  so I used that image.) 

If you draw the death card,  change is coming.  Now we can discuss how to deal with it,  see if we can modify it,  but mostly see if we can surf it to get to the shore safely.  Things never stand still,  life is always in motion, and if we can accept that,  then the Death Card need not be so scary...