For a long time, mountaineering was my metaphor for life.
Climb, slip, climb again. Acclimatize. Wait out storms. Accept that sometimes the most courageous decision is to turn back. Mountains teach humility quickly. They teach patience even faster. They show you—viscerally—that progress is never linear, and resilience is not bravado but the ability to pause without panic.
I thought that was the whole lesson.
But lately, another metaphor has been quietly overtaking it: navigation.
Mountains give you a snapshot of life. Navigation gives you the continuum.
On a mountain, the challenge is vertical. You see the peak. You measure gain and loss. You know when you are up, when you are down, when you are stalled by weather. The feedback is immediate. Brutally honest.
On the ocean, it’s different.
There are no visible milestones. No summit to point at and say, “There.” Some days the wind fills your sails effortlessly and you move as if the world is conspiring in your favor. Other days there is nothing—no wind, no forward motion, just heat, stillness, and the slow drain of uncertainty. The doldrums are not dramatic. They are quiet. That’s what makes them dangerous.
And yet, navigation assumes this will happen.
Traditional navigators never expected favorable winds all the time. They expected variability. They expected misalignment. They expected nights when the stars vanished behind clouds and days when progress could only be felt, not measured.
What mattered was not speed.
What mattered was orientation.
There’s a saying attributed to Mau, the great Micronesian navigator: one who knows the stars would never get lost. It’s often quoted romantically, but it’s far more practical than poetic.
Knowing the stars doesn’t mean staring at them constantly. It means holding a direction internally. It means understanding that even when the canoe is pushed sideways by wind or current, you keep the nose aligned. You correct. You compensate. You don’t confuse drift with failure.
Life feels a lot like that.
Sometimes things line up. Career, family, health, timing—all moving together, cleanly. Other times, nothing responds. Effort produces no visible outcome. You’re not sinking, but you’re not moving either. This is where people panic. They abandon their course because motion has stalled.
Navigation teaches something subtler: stillness is not the same as being lost.
If you know where you’re headed—really know it, not as a wish but as a direction—you don’t need constant confirmation. You make small corrections. You wait when waiting is required. You move when movement becomes possible again.
Mountains teach endurance.
Navigation teaches trust.
Trust that progress doesn’t always announce itself.
Trust that course-correction matters more than speed.
Trust that losing sight of landmarks doesn’t mean losing direction.
And maybe that’s the deeper meaning behind “never getting lost.” It’s not about always knowing where you are. It’s about knowing who you are aligned with, what you are steering toward, and refusing to mistake temporary drift for permanent failure.
The stars don’t rush you.
The ocean doesn’t explain itself.
Neither guarantees ease.
But if you learn how to orient—to keep the nose of your life pointed toward what matters, adjusting gently, persistently—you don’t actually need certainty.
You just need alignment.
And that, it turns out, is enough to keep going.
