Learning to Adjust Your Sails
Book title: First You Have to Row a Little Boat: Reflections
on Life & Living
Author: Richard Bode
Length: 182 pages
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Price: $14.99 USD
By Maggie Bowker
Learning to Adjust Your Sails
“To
tack a boat, to sail a zigzag course, is not to deny our destination or our
destiny…it’s to recognize the obstacles that stand between ourselves and where
we want to go, and then maneuver with patience and fortitude, making the most
of each leg of our journey, until we reach our landfall” (Bode, 42).
In his national bestselling book, First You Have to Row a Little Boat:Reflections on Life & Living, Richard Bode writes about his personal
obstacles and how he overcame them by “learning to row a little boat.” In his
memoir, Bode talks about the life-changing events he experienced such as losing
his parents at a young age and making the decision to quit a successful job in
the PR field to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a freelance writer.
Bode grew up on LongIsland's Great South Bay, where he was raised by his aunt and uncle. Growing up
on the water, Bode had an insatiable desire to learn to sail. At the age of 12,
he did just that, he learned to sail—but not before learning to “row a little
boat” first.
Photo
Credit:
http://www.actuallywecreate.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/smoothsailor1.jpg
Bode’s memoir is one that
uses metaphoric language to express the
way he learned about life’s ever-changing ways—through sailing. He
relates the obstacles he faced in sailing to the obstacles in his life and how
he overcame them. At first, the sailing terms were hard for me to comprehend,
but they really made the true story feel more genuine.
I really enjoyed reading this book because it
is inspirational and provides a new outlook on embracing change, finding
yourself and becoming the person you want to be.
Although everything may
not always go the way you plan in life, by learning to adjust your sails you
will fare just fine as Richard Bode has proven.
