Living While The Boat Still Sails

Did you ever get that sinking feeling?

Do you ever get that sinking feeling? We live in difficult times. The problems faced by the United States and the entire world stir up lots of anxiety and pessimism for many people. Then there are the issues we face at work and with our families.

A Zen master once said that life is like stepping onto a boat that is about to sail out to sea and sink. That sounds bleak, but it is not meant to frighten us. It is meant to wake us up.

The boat is life itself. We climb in the moment we are born. The sea is the unknown journey ahead. And the sinking, though we often try to avoid thinking about it, is the fact that life ends. No one stays on the boat forever. It is always moving, and one day, it will go under.

That is not something we talk about easily. In fact, when life feels heavy or uncertain, we say we have that sinking feeling. It is the same idea. Something inside us recognizes that all is not stable or safe. We feel the floor beneath us shift. We feel fear, sadness, and sometimes despair. That sinking feeling is not just about a bad moment or a piece of bad news. It often comes from a deeper place, from the awareness that life can change in an instant or be lost altogether.

When I was a young man, I had a therapist who once told me that I walked around feeling like there was a sword hanging over my head and that disaster could strike at any moment. He was absolutely right. That is how I used to feel and how I used to think. I carried that heavy feeling with me almost everywhere I went. It filled me with anxiety and made it hard to trust the world or believe that things could turn out well. I guess you could say I had a form of PTSD, always expecting the worst. And when you think that way for long enough, it doesn’t just make you anxious. It makes you depressed too, because it starts to feel like there is no hope, no point, no future.

But things changed. Over time, I worked hard to understand myself, to heal, and to grow. And now, at the age of 82, I can say that I no longer think that way. That old fear does not sit on my shoulder the way it once did. I do not live in constant expectation of disaster anymore. I no longer see life as only danger. And I do not carry that hopelessness that once clouded my view of the world.

So yes, the boat will sink one day. But it has not yet. And even though we know that, we still have to live as fully as we can in the moment. We still have to taste life, to love, to laugh, and to give what we can to others.

The great Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh taught us to live in the present moment. That has stayed with me. It took me a long time to absorb that way of thinking. But now I understand it. Because when you live in the present moment, you are not caught in the fear of the future or the sadness of the past. You are just here. Alive. Breathing. Aware.

And in that space, there is peace.