A story about a Gate, loss and hope.
Day: January 7, 2016
The Story Of Our Flying Dutchmen
Sink or Swim
Sink or Swim…pull yourself up by those bootstraps! Just make up your mind to survive and do it…DO IT ON YOUR OWN.
Nobody can stop you, except for you!
TAKE CARE OF YOU FIRST!!!
Do you know who stresses this can-do attitude the loudest?
The people who open their mouths the widest and spew this wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire that’s WHO.
Would you like to know how many ” I survived and so will you tales” I’ve heard all of my life?
Enough to flood the Earth twice over.
As I’ve listened to these stories I always hear that little thread- that little throw away line passed over briefly, quickly about someone being there – the neighbor who showed up and knocked on the door or the cat or dog who jumped in a lap and reminded you that you weren’t lost, that you weren’t alone…
‘And then I decided to SURVIVE- and that’s why I know you can too!”
No you survived because you had a Pilot, the thing the Dutchman needed on that fateful night to help her out of the storm.
For some reason, people have a hard time ‘fessing up to that.
The first reference in print to the ship ( Flying Dutchman) appears in Travels in various part of Europe, Asia and Africa during a series of thirty years and upward (1790), by John MacDonald :
The weather was so stormy that the sailors said they saw the flying Dutchman. The common story is that this Dutchman came to the Cape in distress of weather and wanted to get into harbour but could not get a pilot to conduct her and was lost and that ever since in very bad weather her vision appears.[1]
So yes, I’ve sunk, I’ve managed to swim through shark infested waters and I made it to the shore- but never for a minute was I alone- that’s how I made it. I was lucky enough to have a family member, my dogs, my cats and some true blue friends there when the storm hit.
And that’s why, when the people in my life who have stressed the ” Take Care Of You First” manage to get caught in a storm, I’ll be there for them too.
For as much as I’d like to see a few of them get sent straight to Davy Jones Locker I won’t stand by and do nothing because I couldn’t live with that decision.
I don’t want to look out into the darkness one night and see the Flying Dutchman of my creation caught in a storm that will never end.
It’s not an image I can live with and it’s not one I want to take into eternity with me.
