I crossed the Atlantic from Cherbourg to New York upon the old Queen Mary, a vessel grown venerable, nigh unto retirement,
yet still swift and nobly appointed when set beside the common steamers of trade. She cleaved the waters with a majesty that the newer craft could scarce imitate.
When the Atlantic, in its caprice, grew rough and heaved its great billows against us, we rode through the tumult as though upon a calm inland lake; scarce a roll disturbed our repose.
I inquired of an officer why the ship suffered so little. “Is it her great size?” I asked.“Nay,” he replied with quiet pride, “it is the stabilizers we fitted but a few years since. Now the roughest seas trouble her not at all.”
So it is with life. There come fair, sunlit days and there come days of storm; the one invites us to linger, the other to endure. Yet we need not be the playthings of every wind that blows across the soul.
We may fit our own stabilizers—devices of the inner life—to steady us amid the chopping sea of civilized existence.These stabilizers are found in simplicity and deliberate living. By daily meditation we calm the mind, we make it as still as Walden Pond at dawn, when not a ripple mars its surface.
Meditation is the true medication for the stability of the spirit; and of all its forms, the repetition of a sacred word or mantra proves most effectual.
It slows the racing thoughts, as one might quiet a restless brook by turning its course gently aside, until the waters lie mirror-like and reflect the heavens.In the midst of this chopping sea of life—its clouds, its storms, its quicksands, and its thousand petty distractions—a man must steer by dead reckoning if he would reach any true port.
Let him simplify, simplify; let him withdraw from the clamor and attend to the essential facts alone. Thus equipped, he may pass through sunny days and stormy ones alike, not flounder, but glide on with an inward calm that no outward gale can shake.
Go not abroad in search of stabilizers; install them within- through Meditation. Live deliberately, front the essential, and discover that the quiet mind may dwell as contentedly in the humblest cabin—or upon the heaving deck—as in any palace of luxury.