All sailors check their compasses to stay on course, but a wise sailor checks his compass frequently.
Imagine setting sail on a journey across the ocean. As we begin the voyage, we look at our compass and set our heading. But the wind, waves and currents push us around. Without landmarks, we don’t know if we are still on course. We need to check our compass.
But if we only look at our compass once in a long while, there may be problems. We may have been sailing off course for some time, and when we finally look down, we may discover a giant correction is needed. And large corrections are hard and take time. It would be better to continuously and frequently check the compass and make minor corrections as needed.
Life is like a sailing voyage. We set our course in the voyage of life, sure of what we would like to become. But life’s distractions, difficulties and vagaries push us around. Character defects and relationship problems sneak up on us. We are unaware of how far off course we are.
In navigating, sailors look at their compasses; in life, we complete written inventories. We assess our relationships with people, principles, and institutions to check our heading. By writing down what we are doing, we see what we are. What we are doing is in precise alignment with what we are.
And as a sailor may find he is far off course if he does not check his compass regularly, we may find that we are far off course if we don’t do regular and frequent personal inventories. If we have not done a thorough inventory for some time, we may find we are far off course, and a large correction is needed. And these are painful, often involving amends and strenuous efforts to remove character defects.
If we had frequently checked, we could have made minor corrections as the waves and distractions of life and our character pushed us to and fro. With continuous inventories habituated, we pause, identify deviations from our intended path, and make minor corrections to stay on course. The small course corrections are much less painful than large ones.
A written personal inventory is checking our metaphorical compass heading. Frequent and continuous adjustments are important in the metaphor and real life.
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