Perspective

Last weekend I sailed from Orange Beach to Fairhope.   The straight-out-of-the-north wind made it a 10 hour Journey.  I'm not complaining, mind you.   It was a beautiful day, we made it safely.   Not much broke.

Here's a clip from that trip:

As you sail, expecially with a purpose, you spend alot of time looking up at the Windex.  Not the stuff you clean windows with but the little spinning arrow thingy at the top of the mast.  It denotes your apparent wind and helps you to locate and manage your points of sail.   This is where, when sailing, some finesse can come into play -- you try to balance the heading you wish to travel against the optimum wind angle.

As I'd stare at the Windex for minutes on end, switching between it and the compass, the rolling waves, dancing dolphins and playing gulls around the sails would disappear into the purpose of the moment.   Maintain a heading of 315 for 30 minutes, then tack the other direction, rinse and repeat as they say.

I suppose that's the trick of perspective.   We can sometimes see only what we let ourselves see.

We measure cold as an absence of hot, bad as a negative good.  Everything being relational. 

Against my own better judgement, I watched both the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention, this year via selective coverage points.    I shouldn't have.

I'm continually amazed how we, nieghbors, brothers and sisters can be so far apart on so many issues.   That too, is a trick in perspective, I feel.  The Republicans can't be all right or all wrong.  The Democrats can't be all right or all wrong.  If so, who'd follow them.

In my perspective as an independant, a sailor and a ponderer of things over my head I see things in the most simplistic of terms.   If I lived in a town with only two Air Conditioner Techs and my AC broke, I'd call the one with the most compelling offering.  If, after only four years, I found that tech's work to be lacking, I'd try the other guy.   At the end of that four years, what then?   

I know this.. I wouldn't be dumb enough to pay the same two guys to undo each others' work every four years.

Yet, that's where we are headed.   Alas, though, it's time for me to switch headings again, from politics to life we go, eyes on the Windex, not too far now...