We’re all in the same boat

Fun fact: Today marks the 110th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. It’s a tragedy that is somehow both horrifying in its scope and mesmerizing in its legend. More than a century has passed but we’re still pretty into the story. Of course, it helps that 20 years ago or so they made a pretty cool movie about it starring beautiful people and a completely fabricated love story.

Maybe if someone gave James Cameron a few hundred million dollars and got Leo and Kate to make out on the Sultana, we’d generate a little more interest in our own maritime disaster. No, really, it’s a compelling story that should be way more famous than it is.

But anyway, I got to thinking about the Titanic after seeing that it was the anniversary of the mighty ship’s blind date with an iceberg up in the North Atlantic, and my mind just kept coming up with boat metaphors… “Like rats abandoning a sinking ship” and “the captain must go down with the ship” and “sailing on a ship of fools” and “any port in a storm” and “when my ship comes in” and such.

And one that kept popping up in my head was “We’re all in the same boat.” I guess it’s because we’ve spent the last two years “all in this together” with the COVID-19 thing. But you know what? It’s true. No matter what divides us and no matter our differences, we all want to see our families, our communities, our society and our country succeed.

Even when I see our leaders make some decision or new

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piece of legislation I disagree with, I know they are doing what they truly believe is the right thing, or at least I hope that’s what they’re doing. Surely none of our elected leaders would push their agenda knowing it’s bad for the country, right? Right?

Let’s not kid ourselves. We are, as a nation, going through a roug patch. In a nation of 330 million-plus people there are about as many points of view on every subject from education to the economy to infrastructure and all points in between.

Yes, we have partisan politics. Yes, we have debate on things like race and gender and equality and socioeconomic divides. There’s not necessarily a “right” answer to some of these problems, but there has to at least be a “good” answer, doesn’t there?

Im not saying it can happen overnight and I’m certainly not saying it will be easy to do, but f we could all just figure out a way to get the ship going in a “good” direction, we’d all be a lot better off.

Sorry, I had to throw in one more “boat” line…