There is a tide in the affairs of men…

Waxing philosophical…

I had this old book when I was a kid called “Williams Choice Literature.” I have no idea where it came from. It was old when I got it, so you can imagine how ancient it is now! It’s filled with poems and short stories by authors like Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Wadsworth, Henry W. Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Dickens and many more. I loved that book and read it over and over, and in fact, still have it.

The last few pages were devoted to various quotes, one of which has stuck in my mind all these years:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, when taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallow and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.”

The quote was attributed to Shakespeare in the book, and it wasn’t until much later I found out it specifically comes from "Julius Caesar, Act 4, scene 3".

Now realistically, we make choices every day that affect our life. Even when we don’t make conscious choices about things, we are really still making choices, that being NOT to do something. What we do or do not do affects the next thing happening all through our lives.

That being said, there does seem to be those golden opportunities in life now and then to make bigger changes, the full sea with a current going in the right direction, and if you miss it, you miss out.

I feel like there is just such a tide in my life right now.

This course I’m taking is stretching me. It takes up almost all of my time right now. It would be easy to give up. There are frustrating moments when I wonder, “What in the world was I thinking!??”

Well, what I was thinking is I can either float along in the backwaters, or take the current presented to me, and DO SOMETHING. I don’t want to lose out on the ventures in my life. I want to go for the gusto, have all the adventures I can, and just DO IT!

I’m going with the tide.