You’re at sea. Floating. Adrift. It’s been days and the land that is in sight is much too far to swim. You would not make it. You’ve thrashed at the water with your hands, but the waves, subtle they may be, are still too powerful; all your might is still no match. You’ve looked around the boat many times. Its a small craft- one might call a row boat- that is if you knew what rowing was. There are a couple of wooden rods, several planks of wood, a large roll of hearty twine, a sheet of cotton, a length of chain, a bucket, a large serrated knife, and enough food and water to get by. At first you see if one of the wooden rods will reach the ocean floor as to push your craft along. One rod is not long enough. You then use some of the twine to tie the two rods together, lengthening them, but they’re still not long enough. In so doing you find the bonds of the twine were not strong enough and you lose the second rod to the currents.

Resources reduced you lay back in the boat and take in the sky. It’s pretty but it’s hot. It’s been hot. Thankfully the cloud cover has been sufficient. Your sunburn hurts but it could be much worse. You fall asleep for a short period. You awaken with an idea. You grab the bucket and scoop the water away from the boat- you’re moving! The water displacement the bucket offers is much more than your hands could ever hope to accomplish and you’re on your way! Head down, you scoop and scoop and scoop, exhausting yourself. You excitedly look up to catch your breath and view your progress but you find that all that scooping on one side of the boat has led you in a giant circle; you’re back where you started. In dismay and defeat and anger you throw the bucket at the water and before you can realize what you’ve done the bucket is too far away to reach. You lie back again. You cry. Spun in circles, tired, sunburnt, supplies dwindling- your mind rages. What you want seems so attainable. Within reach. You can see where you want to go. You can imagine yourself walking on the shore, steady earth under you instead of these unpredictable, rocking waves. It’s right there. It's right there. You remind yourself that at least you’re in a boat. With means. With food and with water. Your reality could be that of just floating in the ocean. You could be a large fish’s meal.

It begins to rain. At first its such a reprieve from the sun’s rays but as it intensifies, your boat starts to accumulate water. You tell yourself that it’s fine. That it will surely stop before any threat arises. But it does not stop. And the water does rise. In a panic, you frenetically scoop water from the boat with your hands, but its no match for the intensity of the storm. You watch in horror as you feel helpless in fighting what is happening to you. As you use all of yourself to slap at the water in the boat, casting it off and out in every direction, you hear a tap, a dull thud, coming from the side of the boat- the storm caused more waves and those waves brought your bucket back to you. Overjoyed you snatch it from the water and begin to scoop from your sinking boat. The bucket is far more efficient in this task and you begin to win the battle. And as you begin to win, the storm lets up. You spend the next hour getting every drop of water from your boat and as the sun peaks out from behind a cloud you’re grateful for your boat, you’re grateful for the sun, you’re grateful for your hands, and for at least a little while, you’ve forgotten all about the shore. You just overcame the elements themselves. You survived. You faced horror and overcame it. You laugh to yourself as you lie down in the boat, safe, warm, and fall into a deep sleep.

Well rested and feeling accomplished you wake. “Hello sun!” You exclaim. “Hello boat,” you say as you run your fingers across the edge of the wooden craft that has held your entire life in its care. You set everything in the boat out in front of you. You decide that you can figure this out. You mentally run through your experiences- the bucket did yield results. Your hands, you’re convinced, would work, they just didn’t have leverage… if only they were bigger, flatter.. if only they were longer! You grab the knife. You cut down one of the planks of wood. You whittle notches in both it and the long wooden rod. You lash them together with tightly wound coils of twine ending in nots that god himself could not undo. You grasp your creation tightly at one end, lowering the plank end into the water. Your other hand grasps the middle and you start to displace water. Remembering what you learned from the bucket, you swing this newly invented tool to the other side of the boat and displace water there. And back and forth you go. Moving water on one side, then the other. Repeatedly. You find you can steer with this thing you’ve created. One extra stroke on the left or the right corrects your course. You’re moving. And you’re moving directly toward land. The slow waves are no match for what you’ve made. You shout out in joy! You have created the very thing that you needed to. Well on your way you laugh. You laugh how frustrated you were. You laugh at what you’ve been through- things you thought were the end. And most of all you laugh because if you just had two of this thing you just made you wouldn’t have to switch sides every other “paddle”- a term that just came to you for the motion you’ve been repeating. As you enjoy this thought, and reminisce about the other rod, lost to sea, you hear a familiar tapping, a familiar dull, repeating, thud- that second rod, thought lost to sea, has been returned. As you scoop it from the ocean, as you did the bucket, you realize the only thing that stood between you and the shore was learning. Was some growing. Was some work. The only thing that stood between you and where you wanted to be was time.