Tis The Set Of The Sail – Poem By Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I love this short poem. When first sober and very defiant in my agnosticism, I was able to find a way of relating to a Power greater than myself as breath and wind. I knew my breath was absolutely essential to my life yet something I was being given each moment of every day unceasingly …without my willing it to happen. There was something gifting me with breath and thus life in this unconditional way moment by moment. I could conceive of this Power as with me wherever I go, life giving, without any judgment or condemnation … and I could also find a way to call this Power good.

I could also conceive of this Power as the wind … the many circumstances in my life that just blow in or blow out. I don’t need to fight or judge the wind but rather learn how to set my sail to it.

This poem was very powerful in teaching me to realize that when I could learn to accept the wind of my circumstance ; I could focus on learning how to become a good sailor regardless of what the wind might do … to see that the wind of my circumstance simply needed to be responded to NOT fought,blamed, judged or condemned. I could see myself as this sailor learning to set my sails to whatever the intensity and the direction of the wind might be moment by moment … and I could begin to see the spiritual principles of the program as the way I was learning to set my sails.

The ancient Stoic philosopher Epictetus in the 2nd century described this realization as ‘we are not disturbed by things, but by the view which we take of them’. Maybe this poem can help make that timeless ancient wisdom come alive for you like it did for me . This poem is also listed in the Recovery Poems section of the GUGOGS website. – Bruce M.

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Tis The Set Of The Sail — Or — One Ship Sails East

But to every mind there openeth,
A way, and way, and away,
A high soul climbs the highway,
And the low soul gropes the low,
And in between on the misty flats,
The rest drift to and fro.

But to every man there openeth, 
A high way and a low,
And every mind decideth,
The way his soul shall go.

One ship sails East,
And another West,
By the self-same winds that blow,
‘Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales,
That tells the way we go.

Like the winds of the sea
Are the waves of time,
As we journey along through life,
‘Tis the set of the soul,
That determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.