How to stay on course when your itinerary changes.

How to stay on course when your itinerary changes.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE PART OF THE PANDEMIC: How to stay on course when your itinerary changes...

We are currently on a Carribean cruise, and due to a litany of unforeseen medical accidents  involving several passengers, our ship was forced to circle back towards the port of Miami. Twice. Our voyage’s GPS navigation has continued to look like a toddler mapped it on his Etch n’ Sketch, with scribbled lines bypassing land, and, instead, circling around and around islands in the deep blue sea. The sudden change in schedule shoved the collective energy of our ship into a feeling of uncertainty. As the days without a port multiplied, that uncertainty amped up into restlessness, and then to a full blown, frantic freneticism. By the time we had finally gotten to our first port, the throbbing masses gushed down the gangway onto dry land like a metaphorical bloodletting. A collective and palpable sense of relief aboard ship followed. As I witnessed each unusual event unfold, I realized just how strong of a magnetic pull fear-based chatter presents. And the onset of change—sudden or slow—can elicit the slippery slope of uncertainty most profoundly from each of us. It made me wonder, “How can each of us avoid sliding uncontrollably down into the murky depths of mass hysteria?” 

An understanding started to bubble up from my very being as a timely reminder: Even without being able to see a familiar shoreline, we are never truly lost at sea if we can chart the ‘current location’ coordinate of how we feel in any given moment. 

In life, we cannot go back and physically change former ports of call. We have no physical power in the past, for, we exist in the whole mind, body, soul of our power only and ever in each present moment. The moment we acknowledge how we really feel, a clear intersection between our mental, physical longitude and latitude emerges. If we set our next coordinate to a better feeling place, and move towards it in whatever way soothes us, the ports of call—and, in turn, life’s cruise in total—will then take care of themselves. In each moment that we allow ourselves to be steered away from the media panic and towards the better-feeling serenity of meditation, the healthy exertion of exercise, or the pleasurable soothing of something as simple as a pedicure, we can begin to steady our course. We must know the current location of where we are in order to reveal the next directional step enroute to what we most desire. The concern over keeping to a strictly established itinerary will abate in favor of enjoying each moment of the voyage. 

It may not be a popular thought among the masses, but the truth that I have come to learn intimately on this cruise is that we can feel good no matter where we are. We are never at the mercy of the masses. 

Absolutely no one else has control over how we feel without us abdicating our power to the destructive wormhole of their rumor mill. And if we can care enough about our own emotional state, we will open ourselves to the GPS guidance already leading us on an exciting, dynamic journey to warmer, sunnier, islands of paradise. 

Bon voyage...