It’s easy to miss the calm slosh and lap of the ocean. The distant call of birds whose entire lives are spent floating along with and against the slow breeze that rolls with the tide. The general din of human life itself generated by other souls drawn to the edge of wonder and realization of our minuscule place in the universe. I find the ocean, both being by it and in it, to be one of the best analogies for life I can think of.

Which makes my aversion to the ocean for most of my life to be somewhat ironic.

My mind and body are a sailboat, traversing the crests and dips of a vast ocean. Calmer days are beautiful. The crisp sea air is revitalizing. I can look out on the horizon and see the setting sun beyond and endless expanse between the water and a clear sky. The ebbing warmth of the day’s end permeates my skin, and the orange glow seen past my closed eyelids feels analogous to the very renewal of my soul, which spends its days as the captain of the ship.

It’s the storm that turns all of that on its head. Long gone is the gentle sway of a life at sea. The pit of my soul’s stomach pitches as the harsh waves thrash my sailboat, threatening to crash down on my battered sails and wash my soul off the deck completely.

My mind loses its cool, spending so much effort trying to react to the storm that my soul too becomes distracted. The rudder, the direction of my life, becomes second priority to merely managing the battle with the storm. “Hard to starboard!” my soul calls. I hear the wooden ship creaking from bow to stern and with gritted teeth my soul pulls to the left. The storm tries its best to snap the hull of my ship in two, but sooner or later its worst proves to be not good enough. The pelting sheets of rain start to wane and before long the dark skies part to the clear blue I so longed for.

For the longest time, those moments, when the light at the proverbial end of the tunnel was reached, felt like victory. I persevered through my mental hurdles. I weathered the storm of solitude, depression, doubt, and every other sense of malaise.

But where the Hell am I?

I became so focused on turning my ship this way and that to manage the challenge of the sea that I veered off course. I’ve lost my way. I allowed the storm to so heavily dictate my actions that I find myself far away from the course I originally set.

For the longest time I struggled with dealing with the storm at all. My ability to, for the most part, do so now is an accomplishment I feel proud of. The act can still get the better of me, and I’ll need time to myself to recharge; to repair my ship before it can be seaworthy once more. And that’s okay.

But my progress isn’t enough.

I see now that there’s another layer I need to explore if I am to reach the goals I’ve set for myself. It’s not enough to just weather the storm. While managing the fearsome seas, I need to make decisions that both get me through the storm and leave me positioned to still head in the direction I want to go.

The storms of life, indirectly, are given more power over my life than I ultimately want to give when I set defeating the storms as my sole purpose. The storms win in a way, if in their defeat they drive me off course. I would rather my ship take more damage if it means I stay on course. True mastery of life, to me, will be managing the storms while remaining on course. If my charted course is due north, I cannot turn south to weather a storm. No storm is worth taking me off course.

Hold on, Albert. When the storms  inevitably come, batten down the hatches and hold onto that rudder like your life depends on it. Because in a lot of ways, it does.