No Whining About The Weather

During all the summers my family spent in Glandore there was one edict above all: No Whining About The Weather! In fact, it is enshrined on a chalkboard near the front door. So even if I wanted to whine about the weather this winter—bemoaning the endless procession of wet, windy, and wet AND windy days—I wouldn’t. Family culture is a powerful force.

Apart from reducing the overall frequency of whining, which is always a worthy goal, I always partially understood the edict as an attempt to rapidly acculturate visitors to the Irish relationship with weather, in which a little rain (or even a lot of rain) should not interfere with plans or activities. So I have been slightly surprised in recent weeks to experience a building chorus of weather whining from just about every Irish person I know.

I take it as a sign that we are in especially dismal and dire weather circumstances, and that turns out to be true. In some parts of Ireland it rained every single day of January. Everywhere else, it felt like it did. In Northern Ireland the January deluge added up to the wettest January in 149 years. February has been just as bad, or worse. Bookmakers are laying odds that this will be the wettest Irish February…ever. That is epic sogginess, and the rain just keeps pouring, sprinkling, and misting. No wonder the locals have had enough to breach their inherent stoicism.

Somewhat to my surprise, I have been unbothered by the wet winter. I am not whining because I truly don’t mind. I came here as an experiment—my entire life at this stage seems to be an experiment—to see whether West Cork winter was tolerable. And if I am able to maintain equanimity in the face of one of the dankest winters in memory, then I think I can conclude I find winter in West Cork, at a minimum, tolerable. On occasion I might even employ more complimentary verbiage: like peaceful, beautiful, and even joyful. That is thanks to the occasional bursts of bright, warm sun, and the proliferation of butter-yellow daffodils resolutely announcing the imminence of Spring.

I don’t think I would have felt this way a few years ago. I might not have whined, but within I might have felt somewhat aggrieved. No longer, and I think I know why. There is a profoundly important philosophical foundation that living aboard a sailboat for extended periods of time instills in a person. It is humble acceptance of Nature’s many whims and moods. There is no point grumbling, lamenting, or wishcasting. We sailors are nothing in the face of the intricate and immense meteorological forces at work around us, that govern our daily existence and dictate the state of our security. Better to react, adapt, and even appreciate, than to waste energy dwelling on what could have been or could be. Carleton Mitchell, a salty, seagoing sage, summed it all up with the simple wisdom a Bahamian fishermen, eying gathering clouds, once shared with him: “You eats what the cook serves.”

That’s one of my favorite sailing adages. Importantly, Zen thinking emphasizes that this sort of acceptance is not passive resignation, but is instead clear awareness without resistance. That is a perfect description of a perfect balance. And if you can extend the ability to accept—to be crystal aware of what is before you and around you, without resistance and resentment—from weather to any aspect of life, then you may well end up as content as any Bahamian angler. Or West Cork denizen.

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