I assembled a power washer the other day. I made a point of reading the instructions. Oddly, unlike the number of times I put together IKEA furniture, or kids bikes at Christmas, I wasn’t left with any spare bits and pieces. Once I was done I read the ‘starting’ details and, sure enough, it fired up on the 2^nd pull.

On the other hand I took my lawnmower in for servicing. I thought something was wrong with it. Turns out my lawnmower didn’t have the feature I assumed it had. It never occurred to me to look at the manual.

I have an unconscious arrogance. I assume I can find my way around cities I have never been in before, I can second guess Swedish bookshelf designers, and I know better than Jamie whatshisname when it comes to braising lamb.

This very software program I am typing with has the ability to do so much, but I still am happy with my one of three font choices and simple cut and paste. To do more would require an online tutorial or something – who has time for that?

And there it is. My arrogance has it’s root in my impatience. I just want to get on with it – taking the time to read will only slow me down. I am not sure what all the rush is, but my logic suggests that five minutes with the manual could be much better spent – doing what exactly, I am not sure.

I also find there is a correlation between me reading manuals, and me listening to instructions from my wife. “did you remember the milk?” “right”… and back out I go. Fortunately I have the time to drive back to the grocery store, since I didn’t waste it reading those instructions for the lawnmower…..

Recently there were two teenagers at our dinner table who just two weeks prior had been floating in a lifeboat500 km off the coast of Brazil. They were among 64 who had survived after been forced to abandon their school ship before it sunk in a vicious storm.

This past weekend all the crew of the ship, and many of their families, stood on a dock in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, where the ship should have been tied up. In an eloquent speech the head of the program, Nigel McCarthy, had these words:

“… Now, each of us must climb out of lifeboat groups and back into watches.  In a lifeboat we are victims of a tragedy, we are waiting for someone to save us.  We are wondering about being saved at all.  Time to get out of the lifeboat.

In watches, we are teams who work together to change the tilt of the world.  We will tilt it towards justice, towards a knowledge of the beauty and importance of human life.  And not least the knowledge of the strength of the (crew) who were in the boats.

Watch or lifeboat, these are the choices of how we live the rest of lives.  The choice begins here today on this dock”.

The choice of that crew is the same one that each of us faces. Do we identify ourselves as ‘victims’ – enduring circumstances we believe are outside of our control, dependent on others for our safety and provision – or do we learn from our tragedies, and seek to take responsibility for our own lives?

Imagine learning that at 16 years old?

The fist slams on the boardroom table as the boss stares steely eyed at his minions. “Failure is not an option” he bellows in an attempt to motivate.

The charges all sit, hands palms down, and nod their heads obediently. All except one. That kid from accounting, the one with the smart ass comments in the break room. He’s thinking that, besides the obvious cliché, it’s the wrong advice if you want push people to greater heights.

If there’s no option to fail, then it doesn’t really matter what you do. It’s like that stupid question he read in the self help book his sister bought: ‘What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?’. Why even waste the time coming up with an answer?

Failure or the potential of, he thought to himself, is actually an integral part of any worthwhile endeavour. Risk, in whatever form, is the currency of success. The potential for consequence makes one plan, think, and pay close attention.

Nature seems to have designed things such that the greater the risk, the higher the potential for catastrophe, the sweeter the accomplishment. And, as Darwin discovered, those who don’t appropriately consider the possible cost usually find themselves with a one way ticket out of the gene pool.

The young man considered disrupting the flow of his superior’s Patton-esque rant and explaining his logic, but thought better of it. He figured the consequence of that action would far outweigh any potential reward. Sure his boss thought failure wasn’t an option, but in the case of our accounting clerk, he might just make an exception.

I’ve been spending a lot of time over these past couple of weeks thinking about “once in a lifetime” experiences. In this short time there have been events like watching Lindsay Vonn win the Downhill at Whistler, and then there are those like 64 crew members, all friends of my son, surviving the sinking of their ship.

I have followed the comments from a friend who is in Haiti helping administrate the setting up of programs to get the earthquake victims on their feet again, at the same time as reading about the tragedy of the young Georgian Luger.

I am wondering what affect any or all of that will have on me in the coming years. What will I remember? What will move me to action? To Change? How will I be motivated to be different or better? What will I do with what I know?

I have an aversion to the ‘Bucket List’. The notion that we create a list of things we want to experience before we ‘kick the bucket’. I worry that our lives can quickly become a series of ‘Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt’ activities.

I helped chaperone a group of high school kids on one of those trips to Mexico to build houses for poor people. One of the kids, a 17 yr old, said that if felt good to be able to ‘tick off helping poor people from my bucket list’.

I am all for seeking out those once in a lifetime events, and I definitely want to have my list of things I want to do. Where the challenge comes is having those opportunities become a means rather than an end to themselves.

Five years ago I stood on a dock in Louisburg Nova Scotia and watched as my son and the other 60 odd members of his crew practiced an abandon ship drill. The Concordia was tied up alongside in a calm bay. The concept of a disaster seemed almost absurd under the circumstances.

The Captain stood at the railing on the bridge and held a stop watch. Once everyone had assembled at mid-ships in front of him he looked at the time. He was not amused. He raised his voice in anger saying they had been too slow and some at the back were not taking the drill seriously. One of the teachers did not even bother putting on their immersion suit – understandably though, I mean it was only make believe.

They rehearsed that drill twice more than morning, and at least once a month for the entire ten months he was aboard.

It was the same for Patrick, my second son who also sailed the ship, crossing the Atlantic four times – including once through the southern ocean enroute to Cape Town.

Last Wednesday, it stopped being a drill. Disasters never happen gradually. Concordia was sailing its way through yet another rough day on the Atlantic – kids were in class, some below in their bunks, others preparing for lunch. Without warning a wind pushing down, rather than across, drove the masts and sails down to the water where, once submerged, meant the boat could not right itself if it tried.

Over 300km from shore the crew donned immersion suits, launched life rafts, and all hands abandoned ship within 15 minutes. They drifted over the swells and watched as the SV Concordia, the skookum 188ft, steel, three masted purpose built Barquentine, slipped below the surface and vanished to the bottom.

The variables of that situation are too numerous to count, yet, with the exception of some bumps and bruises, all 64 members of the Concordia crew are now safely on shore returning to families and loved ones. Not a member lost.

In the midst of my remorse at the loss of Concordia, such an important part of our lives for the last 5 years, I am incredibly thankful. Thankful for the life changing experiences my two sons had aboard her, thankful for the role models and inspiration of the teachers and crew, thankful to Terry Davies, the founder who had the original idea and made it a reality.

But most of all, at this point, I am thankful to Capt. Straab who through his years of experience respected the sea enough to be unwilling to accept anything but a total commitment to the practise of safety – and how that will be the lasting hallmark of those who sailed the SV Concordia.

“I knew it wouldn’t always be that way” said my friend discussing a particularly rough patch in his life. I didn’t hear much of the rest of what he said as I was so distracted by that statement. How could he have known that?

I remember my son Patrick telling me about an experience he had while sailing. He felt terribly seasick one day while on Galley duty. The cook, such the kind man that he was, sent Patrick below to sort the good potatoes from the bad. As Patrick recounts the story he said he felt just terrible, but got through it by reminding himself it was only for now, that once back on deck and on to other things he’d feel different.

Patrick and my friend knew it wouldn’t always be bad because their past experience as human beings, and that of other humans around them, told them so. It’s incredibly rare that any crisis in our lives stays acute for any real period. Sometimes it’s just time that changes or heals, but often it’s gaining a different perspective or point of view once we dry our eyes and lift our heads up to look around.

When I finally tuned back into the conversation it became clear that my friend’s realization that he wouldn’t always feel the way he did was the first step in him not feeling that way. He could look at his crisis just a little bit more objectively and take some steps to weather the storm and set a path beyond it.

I like to live in the moment, but I also tend to wallow in the moment. I so appreciated the reminder that while the reality may not change, the true impact of that reality and my response to it certainly can, and probably will.

My laptop was acting up. It wasn’t doing what I needed. Something was wrong. So, I just turned it off, waited a few minutes, then turned it back on, and everything was fine again. Go figure.

On one of my trips to Africa I was in a van with a group of guys heading from one town to the airport in the capital city. We rounded a corner to find a semi trailer diagonal across the road. There’d been a small slide of earth on to the road, and the truck was stuck, wheels spinning in the mud.

The driver’s own solution was to keep putting his foot on the gas, wheels whirring around – the truck going nowhere. Oddly he repeated this ineffective activity over and over again. It might have been amusing to stand and watch as they tried to figure it out, but we had a plane to catch. Lucky for them we were from the land of snow. It took a lot to convince them to do it our way. Gathering sticks and branches we provided the wheels the traction they needed and within a few minutes the truck was unstuck and on its way.

Like the driver of that truck I don’t let go of things easily. My tendency is to focus on the issue assuming that the more time and attention I give it, the more likely I can find a solution. I often feel like I am spinning my wheels – in my mind all the issue needs is more gas.

It pains me to say this, as it seems too simple, but maybe like my laptop, all I really need to do is turn off…and wait a few minutes.

The sincere poem from the woman with inoperable cancer reminds me once again that I shouldn’t put off that life I’ve always said I wanted. I should no longer complain about the petty issues of my day. Why? Because, just like her, I am going to die – hopefully later than sooner, but ultimately its inevitable.

I watched a movie about a sad, lonely woman who discovers she has a month to live. She takes her severance pay (oh yah, she also loses her job and boyfriend on that same day), and rents a loft over looking the Hudson River. Then she maxes her credit cards filling her place with all the stuff she apparently always wanted. Then she starts having sex with the delivery guy, then with the pizza delivery girl, and then (this is when we turned off the movie) with both of them.

I don’t think this is as enlightened as the back of the DVD case suggested. The freedom of choice and expression motivated by one’s imminent demise may simply be a realization of a limit to the consequence of one’s actions. In the case of the young woman in the movie, she’ll be gone before the credit card bills to come in, or the genital warts appear.

It’s all fine for our poet friend to encourage us to pursue that career that “doesn’t seem to make sense” – she won’t be around to help with the rent payments or the kid’s new shoes.

The rest of us who don’t yet know our ‘best before’ date, we have to live a life that includes responsibility. We have to count the costs. The trick then, regardless of who we are or the position we have,  is not to live assuming we’ll be hit by a beer truck on the way home, but to live knowing that every decision and choice we make is significant and has impact – for us, and for those around us.

I was on the phone with an airline baggage claim person the other day. He responded to my lost luggage issue with “sir, we are doing our best”. I didn’t believe him. I don’t think the young man on the phone was lying, but the thing was, there was absolutely no action to back up his claim. Talk is so cheap.

There is that biblical story of the two brothers. Their father gives them some work to do. The first brother says he will do it, then buggers off. The second says he doesn’t want to do it, but in the end he actually gets the job done. The story points to the second brother as the one who did the right thing. Actions over words.

Its easy to fall into the trap of offering words we know someone wants to hear, even though we don’t intend to, or aren’t sure how to, follow through. My boys have done that successfully for years when it comes to cleaning their rooms.

I had a friend tell me the story of when he was young and his dad, who didn’t live with him, would promise to take him to Disneyland, complete with letting him know the day and hour he’d pick him up. As a little boy my friend would pack his bag and wait, expectantly, for a father who never showed up. I don’t think his dad intentionally meant to mess with his son’s mind and heart – he just clearly could not connect the actions with the words.

I myself am thinking of another friend who is going through a really tough time. I saw him on the street and said I would call him to go out for a beer. That was three weeks ago. I haven’t called.

It’s not enough that I mean what I say. I actually have to follow through for it to become true.

Today I watched a young man at a bus stop carry on quite an animated conversation with himself. Clearly there was a disagreement, and it was evident he was trying to make a serious point by the way he was swinging his arms.

I smiled at the obvious comedy, but then started thinking that maybe he wasn’t as crazy as he looked. A good argument with himself might just what he needed. Iron sharpens iron, or in that instance, iron would sharpen itself I guess.

Why is it that so many of us seem to lack the confidence to take ourselves on? We acquiesce, giving in without a fight. I am sure that most have the ability, the knowledge, and the understanding to go toe to toe with our ego, intellect, or even emotions. I mean what could we possibly be afraid of? What do we have to lose?

But still the conversation goes “I don’t know why I let myself get away with that, I don’t know what I was thinking, I’ve really got to give myself a talking to”.

I often find myself saying one thing and doing another – a complete contradiction.

I have been thinking about this idea that in fact, most of us are actually right where we want to be – even when we say we aren’t. I understand that there are sometimes valid external, extenuating circumstances that hold us back from what we really want. But in many other instances, if I don’t feel I am where I want to be, why don’t I do what is needed to get there? Maybe I don’t really want to get there, or I don’t want to do the work required for that journey.

So, if where you want to be is not where you are, but you’re not really willing to do what it takes to get there, where does that leave you? I figure pretty much in the same place as that young guy at the bus stop.