L1’s Almanac – To Adjust Your Sails Is Still Kind of Evil

Have you seen this saying?

“We can’t direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails”.

You could say….quite a few good things about that saying. How to try and change your future by taking indirect control of things.

But I want you to think about how this is part of behavior you hate, people you resent.

Maybe it’s a boss, maybe it’s a politician, maybe it’s a family member, and some kind of celebrity you used to admire.

Those people know how to distance themselves from their actions. They know how to use detachment from responsibility for their own benefit. They know how to treat other people like the wind.

They can, through minor changes in how they talk, how they walk, how to move things from point A to point B, allow factors outside of themselves to benefit them very much.

What you see as responsible self-guidance and adjustment to outside factors, can also be seen as exploitation of other people, and arrogant risking of other people’s well-being.

The desire to manipulate and the will to guide are really just different shades of a similar color. You know that already, and that’s what makes it so easy to admire or despise someone for actually managing to come out on top in a tricky social scenario.

Perhaps there really are people who lack more than a shred of kindness within them and become all about raw exploitation of anyone of anyone they meet

but if you want to get the most out of evil-seeming people, the best thing is to try to see….what makes them feel like sail adjusters, like explorers on the ocean, who may or may not be pirates depending upon what happens to their supplies.

Why do they feel so very proud and free, when doing things that make you want to tear your hair out? So much of what you see as sneering evil is really a massive sense of value that comes from navigating a world that is always only dubiously reliable.

Even the most blatant and rare evil comes from seeing everyone else as even more eager to exploit you than they ever were.

Learn to see how everyone knows it’s a little bit foolish to pin blame or praise onto anyone, but you can use that to gently guide the winds of fate.

See what makes them feel softly strong, and you can become much better at riding the winds. And maybe someday, the people who really do hate exploitation might be competent enough to run the highest office.

I’d only sail around the world after that takes place- when the emotional pirates can somehow enjoy sailing on their own without desiring even more.