Mindfulness: Get with the Program
December 08, 2020
Mark Twain tells the story of when he was learning to be a steamboat captain on the Mississippi. They had taken off from New Orleans, heading up to Memphis, and after the first day, the captain asked him, “Okay, tell me each bend in the river that we went through: where the sandbars were, where I had to stay close to the shore, where I had to stay away from the shore.” Mark Twain was taken aback. He hadn’t been expecting that he’d have to memorize that much, in that much detail. But as the captain said, if you don’t know each bend, you’re going to get into trouble.