The Ferry That Did Not Come
Short story about sorting what is yours.
The ferry didn't come, the departures board offered no explanation, and eleven people stood on the quay in a sideways wind that found the gaps in every coat.
The man in the good coat began working the problem at once. He rang the office and was put on hold. He calculated, out loud, what the delay would cost him in meetings, then rang again to say so.
By the second hour he had firmly established that the company was badly run and his whole morning was ruined. He was, in fact, right about both.
The old woman with the shopping trolley sat on the bench near the water. She was missing her granddaughter's school assembly, a ten-minute thing involving a recorder and a paper crown, which mattered to her more than anything he was missing that day. She cried about it briefly, at twenty past nine, wiped her face with the back of her glove, and went back to watching the water move.
The ferry finally came at eleven. Both of them boarded. Both of them arrived two hours late, to the same terminal, on the same delayed boat.
But one of them had spent those two hours with the water, the gulls, and a short, real grief that came and went and left her alone afterward. The other had spent them on hold with a woman named Denise, who worked in customer service and was not, in any way, to blame for the weather.
The ferry arrives when it arrives. The only thing you own is the waiting.
Epictetus, Enchiridion 1
“Some things are within our power, and some are not.”
A common English rendering of the opening of Epictetus' Enchiridion. The quay, the ferry and the passengers are Ohananda's own.
Epictetus opens his handbook with a sorting exercise: some things are up to us — our judgements, our intentions, what we choose to do next — and some things simply are not.
The Stoic claim is not that the second category doesn't matter, but that treating it as ours to control is how we manufacture most of our own misery. Notice what the old woman does not do: she doesn't pretend to be fine. Her grief is hers, and she lets it happen. The two-hour campaign against the ferry company was never hers to fight.
Questions & answers
+What is the message of "The Ferry That Did Not Come"?
The ferry arrives when it arrives. The only thing you own is the waiting. Epictetus opens his handbook with a sorting exercise: some things are up to us — our judgements, our intentions, what we choose to do next — and some things simply are not. The Stoic claim is not that the second category doesn't matter, but that treating it as ours to control is how we manufacture most of our own misery. Notice what the old woman does not do: she doesn't pretend to be fine. Her grief is hers, and she lets it happen. The two-hour campaign against the ferry company was never hers to fight.
+Is this a true story?
A common English rendering of the opening of Epictetus' Enchiridion. The quay, the ferry and the passengers are Ohananda's own.
+Which wisdom tradition inspired this story?
Stoicism — Epictetus, Enchiridion 1. Freedom through what depends on us.
What are you fighting today that was never yours to decide?
