The Way It Was Always Going to Come

There’s an old story. You’ve probably heard it. A man’s boat sinks out at sea, and there he is, arms wrapped around a buoy, salt water in his mouth, sky pressing down on him. Somewhere between fear and hope, he prays, the kind of prayer that feels less like asking and more like pleading. “Please, God. Please save me.”

Not long after, a fisherman rows by in a little boat. He waves, calls out, “Friend! Come aboard!” But the man, holding fast to his hope like it’s a duty, shakes his head. “No, thank you. God will save me.”

Hours pass. His skin puckers, lips cracked. A larger boat pulls alongside, tossing a rope. “Grab on!”

Still he refuses. “No, thank you. God will save me.”

By the time the helicopter hovers overhead, the man is barely holding on. But even then—he says no. In the end, of course, he drowns.

When he stands on the other side, shivering and weightless, he asks God, “Why didn’t you save me?” And the answer comes as steady as the tide: “Are you kidding? I sent you a fisherman, a boat, and a helicopter.”

That story comes back to me sometimes on quiet mornings, sipping tea before the house wakes up. Or in the middle of nights when I can’t sleep, tracing over old aches in my mind like they’re bruises that never fully faded. It’s funny how we do this to ourselves. We ask for help, for healing, for love, and then we decide ahead of time exactly how it should arrive. Who it should come from. What it should look like. And if it doesn’t match the picture we painted in our heads, we don’t just ignore it—we push it away.

I have done this. I have done this so many times I almost want to laugh thinking about it now, if it didn’t make my heart ache just a little. There were days I sat there waiting for a specific person to call, waiting for a certain kind of apology, or a particular door to open—blind to the neighbor leaving tomatoes on my porch, or the stranger in the coffee shop offering up a smile that felt like sunlight on my skin.

We hold so tight to the idea that help has to look the way we imagined it, we don’t notice it’s already here, brushing against our lives like wind through tall grass.

And the thing I keep learning, again and again, is that it’s okay to say yes.

Even if the rescue boat isn’t the color we hoped. Even if the person offering us kindness isn’t the one we were waiting on. Even if love shows up wrapped in something quieter, something smaller, than we expected.

Say yes. Say thank you.

Let it in. The blessings aren’t somewhere far off. They aren’t waiting on some distant shore. They are right here, circling like boats on the water, if only we would stop clutching the buoy long enough to reach out.

Life isn’t stingy with its grace. We’re just sometimes slow to recognize its face. That’s the real shape of prayer, I think—not just the asking, but the receiving. And the courage to say thank you for whatever comes, however it comes. Because that’s the way it was always going to come.

Hari Om Tat Sat