The Hard Rule

If it's hard, you're doing it wrong.

I've taught my boys that there is only one exception to this rule.

Jeff and I went sailing today and had a hard time of it. It was nice and windy, perhaps a bit too windy for a first day of sailing a new boat. There were things we clearly hadn't figured out. So we got out on the lake, didn't get the sail up before we pushed up (a mistake), and then had a hard time even trying to get it up as we drifted with the wind a good half mile from the dock.

At one point I started to paddle, but made absolutely no progress against the wind.

So, I gave Jeff the tiller and started to get the sail up and we started to move with a bit more control. Finally, I muscled the sail all the way up, but the bottom part of the luff wouldn't go in the runner on the mast. Still if it was all the way up, we got good wind and we were able to quite successfully tack back to the dock.

I kept thinking, "If it is hard, I must be doing it wrong." But then the only course was to do things the hard way.

So, I analyzed the situation over night. What were my mistakes? Obviously, there should be some pretty clear ones. I made some decisions. First, it isn't a mistake to jump in and try to do something and then fail miserably. It reminds me of Captain Ron's line, "We'll find out on the ocean. Anything's gonna happen, it's gonna happen out there."

Second, you can learn a lot once you know you've made a mistake. For starters, because the sail wouldn't stay up, I knew I must have attached it wrong. Yup. Did it completely wrong. Then the Seamanship book makes it pretty clear that you get the sail up while still roped to the doc.

Which is all to say that, whatever we start to do, we will do it wrong, it will be hard, but paying attention to mistakes will lead you to answers. Captain Ron said it one way. The Japanese have a kotowaza I always liked: しっぱいはせいこうのもといなり (Shippai was seiko no moto). The quote at the beginning of my dissertation by Francis Bacon put it another: Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion. I guess I am sticking by that one.