Boats Against The Current

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

The words above are the last line in Fitzgerald’s classic and find Nick returning to the theme of the significance of the past to dreams of the future. He focuses on the struggle of human beings to achieve their goals. Nick concludes that humans prove unable to move beyond the past: the current draws them backward as they row forward. Nick’s words are neither approval nor disillusionment but rather a melancholy.

I begin this Monday meditating on my past and my own struggles to attain my dreams. Yes, people my age still have dreams. Not the same I had when I was in college, but dreams nonetheless. I bet you still have dreams.

There is one thing I have learned over the years, and that is overcoming the past is a struggle and not easily obtained, but possible. Follow your dreams this Monday morning. There is never a current you can’t overcome.

 

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About the author

Webb Hubbell is the former Associate Attorney General of The United States. His novels, When Men Betray, Ginger Snaps, A Game of Inches, The Eighteenth Green, and The East End are published by Beaufort Books and are available online or at your local bookstore. When Men Betray won one of the IndieFab awards for best novel in 2014. Ginger Snaps and The Eighteenth Green won the IPPY Awards Gold Medal for best suspense/thriller. His latest, “Light of Day” will be on the bookstands soon.