You Don't Turn the Tide

I love great quotes from famous and not so famous people. I love them because they tend to stick with me and the remind me to think. Today's post is about one of my favorite (in my top 10 easily) quotes:

"There is a tide in the affairs of men, when taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." - William Shakespeare

You don't turn the tide, you prepare for it.

Think about this "worldwide financial crisis" (sounds pretty demonic . . .) as a low tide. Matter of fact, the tide is so low that you can see the mud flats for a very long way. The stink of the mud is all around. You can see the debris that careless people have tossed into the water that is now fully exposed. It is not your normal view. This is a very rare low tide. It's almost like what happens prior to a tsunami.

There's no point getting used to this view. It is extremely temporary, unless you want to view it the way it is now. Even though this might be an extended low tide as if Venus and the Moon and Mars are all aligned and pulling as never before. . . it is temporary.

If you're fond of circumstances, you will talk about the low tide at length. You will even get involved in all sorts of predictions about how it happened, who's to blame and what the future of stinking mud is. You might even be on the littering committee that is focused on all that trash that is now exposed out there. There's so much to do and so little time. . .

Or, you could be reminded of Shakespeare's quote and start focusing on the flood of the tide coming in and being prepared to deal with that instead. Low tide is an excellent time to prepare for high tide. There is no better time, matter of fact. While the tide is low, what changes can you make that will affect a greater positive change for you when the tide comes back in? You've lived enough years to know that you can seriously count on the tide coming in as well as it going out, so you know it is not long before the tide will be in again. If you haven't prepared for that change, your fortune will lost in the mud.