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 truth should be enough

So I came across this lovely article on face book, and was thinking of making it a topic for my blog .

Here are Regina Brett’s terrific words of wisdom -

May 28, 2006

To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me.

It is the most-requested column I've ever written. My odometer rolls over to 50 this week, so here's an update:

1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.

2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.

3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.

4. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

5. Pay off your credit cards every month.

6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.

8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.

9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.

10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.

12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.

13. Don't compare your life to others'. You have no idea what their journey is all about.

14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.

15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.

16. Life is too short for long pity parties. Get busy living, or get busy dying.

17. You can get through anything if you stay put in today.

18. A writer writes. If you want to be a writer, write.

19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.

20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.

21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.

22. Overprepare, then go with the flow.

23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.

24. The most important sex organ is the brain.

25. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.

26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: "In five years, will this matter?"

27. Always choose life.

28. Forgive everyone everything.

29. What other people think of you is none of your business.

30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.

31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.

32. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch.

33. Believe in miracles.

34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do.

35. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.

36. Growing old beats the alternative - dying young.

37. Your children get only one childhood. Make it memorable.

38. Read the Psalms. They cover every human emotion.

39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.

40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.

41. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.

42. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.

43. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

44. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.

45. The best is yet to come.

46. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

47. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.

48. If you don't ask, you don't get.

49. Yield.

50. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift..

Now isn’t that terrific?  And isn’t it enough?  But in the strangeness of the internet,  the original article I saw thought that having a 50 year old woman write this was not sufficient,  so they made her 90.

 

And then they put a photo of a really fabulous looking 90 year old next to it. But my fashion savvy friends recognized the photo and said that’s not Regina, it’s Iris Apfel,  New York Fashionista.

And I thought about the vagaries of the internet,  how it finds something perfectly good and then to dress it up more, covers it in tinsel and makes it false.   

We have to live in a world where a good truth is good enough,  otherwise we turn into Brian Williams (whom I admired) who took perfectly good truths and then dressed them up to such an extent that they became false.    We have to avoid that impulse.

Rules for Being Human

Following my ramblings on life lessons,  I thought this piece would work well.  I don't like the word 'Rules' - that can press my buttons,  but if I think of it as Truths,  Truths about being human,  I can take it all in.  I came across it when I was working as a therapist in an addiction clinic,  and it still holds true,  all these years later...

The Rules for Being Human

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.

2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full time informal school called life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid.

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error, experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately "works."

4. A lesson is repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.

5. Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive there are lessons to be learned.

6. "There" is no better than "here." When your "there" has become a "here" you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here."

7. Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.

8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

9. Your answers lie inside you. The answer to life's questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.

10. This will often be forgotten, only to be remembered again.

(Cherie Carter-Scott)

I just love no. 10 - because it is forgotten but lingers,  and once you know it,  you can draw on it again.  Very nice piece,  glad to remind myself of it.

The life lessons of So You Think You Can Dance

So You Think You Can Dance is a dance competition where young and lithe dancers compete in all genres of dance,  starting with 20 dancers,  with 10 being the magic cut off (they go on the group tour afterwards) and the top 6 being the lucky memorable ones, culminating in one America’s most popular dancer...

We watch it every week. They are leaping and pirouetting and strutting, their strengths and weaknesses out there for everyone to see and critique. After their dance, soaking with sweat and not yet having caught their breath, the judges talk about the straightness of their lines and how high their shoulders were. 

And at the end of every show, they huddle together like puppies and watch as one of them is sent away.

And the life lesson I learn?  Be willing to risk it all.  They are so brave!  They really try so hard and they are talented, but most importantly they are out there.  They have, as the judges so often like to say, left everything out on the floor. They don’t hold back to protect themselves. Their vulnerability is sometimes hard to see, but their striving is so admirable.  I love watching them, and I do hate to see any of them go.  I know I was not as brave as them when I was their age.  I was too busy protecting myself, unwilling to risk that sort of public judgment/failure. But they haven’t failed.  They are lifting both themselves and their far less agile audience up.  I wish them all the best of luck, but I wish us all their courage.  If you want something, put it all out there, leave nothing on the floor.  You may not get it, but you will know that you truly tried, and you will absolutely learn the right life lessons on the way…