By Mary Jaksch
If you ever went to the beach as a child you’ll know what happens to sandcastles when the tide comes in.
You’ve built this fantastic castle and then the tide starts to creep in. What to do? You slap a retaining wall around your castle. You frantically dig trenches to divert the water. But it’s all to no avail. The tide is a power that cannot be stopped and finally your beautiful castle is gone. No trace remains.
Here are some proverbs and sayings about the tide that spell out some important life lesson.
Lesson #1: Time and tide wait for no-one
This English proverb tells us to work with time and tide, not against it. So often in life we try to hold out against the tide. We want the summer to last longer. We don’t want to age. We cling to a relationship or friendship that has lost its substance. We fall sick and are in denial about our illness. It’s important to be in harmony with time, with seasons, with the tides of our life.
Lesson #2: There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.
This saying is from “Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare. It carries on as follows: Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. The image the saying conveys is of sailing ships waiting to leave the harbour. As all sailors know, tide and wind are important factors in launching your vessel, and if you miss the right time to leave, you may have to wait a long time.
Actually, in my experience, the ‘right’ time never comes again. Once the moment’s gone – the opportunity also disappears.
Lesson #3: A rising tide lifts all boats
This saying originates from the United States. A while ago I told this story in my account of Why Leo Babauta of Zen Habits Gave Me His Blog:
Some time ago I visited a friend who lives in a remote settlement by the sea. I wanted to use her dinghy and tried to drag it down to the water. I shoved, pulled, and grunted – the darn thing just wouldn’t move!
A neighbor was watching with hands on hips, amused by the antics of a landlubber. “Hey!” I called out, “Lend me a hand, please!” He nodded slowly, grinning. “Yeah,” he said , “I’ll help you – but only after we’ve had a cup of tea.”
By the time we’d finished a cup of tea and he’d told me all about his liver problems and his love-life, a couple of hours had passed. When we got back to the dinghy, the tide had come in and the boat was already half afloat. I was able to launch it with one hand. Easy!
Lesson #4The tide keeps its course.
When you stand on a beach and watch the water coming in, you get a sense of the inexorable nature of the tide. This is what this English saying reminds us of. I take this to be a reminder that we need to stay our chosen course in life, without veering off or luffing the sails.
Lesson #5:The tide never goes out so far but it always comes in again
This is a comforting proverb. So often we give up, just before the tide of fortune turns. The stories of successful show that it’s important to keep on going – beyond what seems reasonable.
Lesson #6: Good luck comes in slender currents, misfortune in a rolling wave.
This Irish proverb mirrors the hard times Ireland has been through in the past. Just think of the famines in Ireland that made so many people emigrate to the United States.
Lesson #7: At high tide fish eat ants; at low tide ants eat fish.
This Thai proverb is mysterious. I’m not quite sure about its meaning. Maybe you could give us your interpretation in the comments?
Lesson #8: Give wind and tide a chance to change.
This is a saying by Richard E. Byrd. I think it’s a very useful lesson. My mother used to give me advice that has a similar meaning. She said, “Don’t dig out a plant to see if its roots are growing.” When we try to effect a change, we have to be patient. It sometimes takes a while for a change of course to show.
Lesson #9: The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.
his quote is from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I’ve noticed that when I try to change something major in my life, there is a difficult point. And that’s when you can see clearly what needs to be changed – but it seems impossible. Courage and faith are at low ebb at such a moment. But, when you look back, it’s exactly that low moment that marked the beginning of change!
Which one of these lessons resonates with you? Let us know about it in the comments.
Finally here is a deeply moving Argentine song about the tide that Janice Hunter of Sharing the Journey alerted me to. It’s called Alfonsina and the Sea and is sung in the YouTube video by famous singer Mercedes Sosa. (It’s with English undertitles).
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{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
What a wonderful collection of quotes, Mary! (I hope folk weren’t saddened to discover that the song was about a poet walking to her death in the sea! Thanks for the link; I’m afraid it won’t work at the moment as my server’s down.)
I love the Shakespeare quote. We don’t know when inspiration or our chance of ‘success’ might come, but there’s nothing stopping us being ready and prepared for it.
As a newbie blogger, the anecdote you shared of the cuppa while the boat floated reminded me that there’s a lot to be said for simply having fun and paying attention to timing; it doesn’t all have to be so hard!
I’m never more at home than when I’m beside the ocean. The way I see it, we’re we’re all waves in the same ocean. We ebb and flow, rise and fall; we can support or destroy, crash into rocks or lap gently onto soft warm sands where we’re loved and appreciated. We don’t always need to know what we’re doing or where we’re going, but if we weren’t all connected, at source, moved by an unseen force, there’d be no ocean.
For any of your readers who haven’t read it, Anne Morrow Lindberghs Gift from the Sea is truly beautiful and inspirational and so full of quoteworthy lines, it needs to be read with a notebook and pencil ready.
Hi Janice!
I wanted to link directly to your post Alsina and the Sea, but your server’s down right now and I couldn’t find the URL. (I’ll at it to the post as soon as your site is up).
The book “Gift from the Sea” sounds wonderful. It might even be worthy of a guest post (hint hint)!
The song by Mercedes Sosa has a bare beauty about it. Even though the story is sad, I find it uplifting because it reminds me to FEEL, FEEL, FEEL.
Oh, you would love it, Mary! I read it by the sea every single year.
Maybe Lesson 7 conveys the message that there’s always an opportunity to be had, whether things are up or down. As they say, a good business person knows how to make a profit whether the market is good or bad. Or it could be getting at the point that sometimes life lifts us into a strong position and someone else into a weaker one. And then, of course, the roles can reverse. So we should always be humble about our successes and compassionate towards other people’s struggles. Great post Mary – the tides are such a compelling metaphor to the patterns of life.
WOW! What a fantastic post this was. I think all of these lessons come down to surrender, patience, and/or acceptance. All very profound and life changing for sure!
You have a great blog Mary, keep up the great writing!
Thanks,
Dayne
TheHappySelf.com
.-= Dayne | TheHappySelf.com´s last blog ..Kill Your Pessimism, Change Your Life =-.
Hi Josh!
Well, I like your interpretation of No 7!
Hi Dayne@! I love the way you’ve put the lessons into a nutshell: surrender, patience, and acceptance!
For the Thai saying, my interpretation would be to be careful of hurting people who are currently below you, because before long they might be in a position to hurt YOU.
I took the Thai saying to mean that it is in the nature of ants to drown in water, and fish to eat them, and it is in the nature of fish to die when stranded, and ants to eat them. All of this dependant on the tide, and an example of The Great Circle Of Life(tm), or ‘for everything there is a season…’
But of course Thai people may use the saying in a completely different cultural context.
I like this quote:
Happiness is not a matter of events; it depends upon the tides of the mind.
- Alice Meynell
A wonderful post, Mary. It brought to mind another favorite:
“Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.” — African proverb
However rough the tide, it’s all good – and needed.
Mary,
Living on the eastern coast of the US, I often think of metaphors for life in relation to the ocean and tides.
Personally, I like to teach my young boys about passivity when discussing the dangers of rip currents.
With rip currents, there is a powerful flow of water going back out to sea.
The natural reaction of the swimmer is to panic and swim directly toward the shore to safety; however, this is the most dangerous route. Many swimmers die from drowning — not because of the rip current itself, but because of the exhaustion of fighting it.
The safest route for the swimmer is either parallel to the shore or to flow with the current further out to sea. This way the swimmer does not spend much energy fighting the rip current.
Sadly, many swimmers die in rip currents every year. If they were only taught that “going with the flow” would have saved their lives…
.-= Kent @ The Financial Philosopher´s last blog ..Beware of ‘Confirmation Bias’ =-.
Lesson 9 (The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide) resonated with me. My life changed in amazing ways I could never have seen after going through a very painful divorce I didn’t want.
.-= Sami – Life, Laughs & Lemmings´s last blog ..How Aussies Entertain Poms Down Under =-.
Hi Hope!
That’s a very creative interpretation of the Thai saying!
Hi DiscoveredJoys!
Thanks for a lovely addition to the sayings – and for another creative interpretation of the Thai saying.
Hi Kent!
You reminded me that I should have asked some surfers for additional sayings.
The ‘rip’ analogy is very interesting. I live in New Zealand where many people die on beaches, most of them getting caught in rips.
When bad things happen, it can be hard to stay calm, instead of thrashing around in panic.
Having said that, the opposite of the ‘rip’ story is the one of the frog who falls into a pail of milk and thrashes around in panic. Having created butter, he is able to hop out.
Ok, ok – it’s not a tidal story…
Hi Sami!
You said, “My life changed in amazing ways I could never have seen after going through a very painful divorce I didn’t want.”
A fellow Zen teacher, John Tarrant, once said: “When the heart is broken, the light can begin to enter through the cracks.”
Thanks, Mary for this wonderful post. Lesson 7 seems to me to be telling the story of life in a nutshell, and so gently. Everyone eats, and is offered as food. Doesn’t seem so bad, does it?
Thanks also for bringing to my mind Leonard Cohen’s wonderful Anthem, with the chorus:
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
Gassho!
I think the Thai quote is saying “fortune can always change.” If you’re the fish, you can be at the top of the food chain at high tide, but at low tide you’re ant buffet.
It’s like the old zen story of the old man and the wild horse, where good or bad luck are merely a matter of perspective, and what may appear as good luck can change to “bad” luck in the blink of an eye.
Hi Mary
Your comment on Lesson #2:
‘Actually, in my experience, the ‘right’ time never comes again. Once the moment’s gone – the opportunity also disappears.’
has me thinking. I agree with this in a sense… and I have experienced this feeling but I think it is only half the story.
I think we have myriad opportunities and the only reason we cannot see them is that we narrow our view, only looking for a narrow range of parameters, the ones that fit what it is we want or expect at the time, the perfect situation according to Di or to Mary.
The new opportunities may not look to be a good fit but in fact they are the exact fit for it is what is available, right there. We cannot see it because of our need to control. Besides the excitement of an exact fit has gone, of getting everything we want, of being right and so we must have failed – but I don’t think so.
Peak moments are great and exciting but like everything they come and they go. If we miss them there will always be something else, so for me taking what I have right in front of me feels like the sane place to be, not rueing the supposed great opportunity I just missed. I don’t always manage sane!
I believe LESSON #7 refers to life’s ‘Wheel of Fortune.’
Sometimes you’re on top, other times you’re at the bottom. And that’s how life is always going to be
.-= KHUER´s last blog ..(via maluna)Beautiful but so EMPTY and LONELY.. Just exactly… =-.
I felt the tide coming to take my ex-girlfriend from me. The relationship grew stale, but I didn’t fight it. I was sad for months when she wouldn’t return my calls. I kept my chin up and continued to practice the Argentine Tango at my dance studio. We continued to practice together, as a matter of fact, and, through the dance, our increased connection saved the relationship from completely fading. When we stopped trying to blame this and that and just focused on our dancing, a sense of fundamental purpose came back. I love riding the waves
Thank you for a great post,
Pete
.-= Panayiotis Pete Karabetis´s last blog ..Technorati Blog Claim =-.