Staying Upright in Tumultuous Times

Adventures in Paddleboarding

This past Sunday I dropped my youngest daughter off at a three-day overnight camp on Cape Cod. Rather than brave the return traffic, I pitched a tent nearby and gave myself a rare gift: two days completely alone.

I brought a couple of books, binoculars for birdwatching, and my paddle board and staked out a campsite near a peaceful kettle pond. On the first morning I waited for clouds to clear then I carried my board to the water and pushed off.

All a Board: Finding Balance

Paddleboarding always calms me. The craft is so simple. I love the hush, the slow glide, the closeness to the water, and the alert ease of standing with an oar, ready to meet each ripple. An albatross coursed overhead in search of fish; a great blue heron lifted its giant wings and crossed the pond. The sun flashed on the surface while a light breeze nudged me offshore.

Paddleboarding is an exercise in balance. You sense the wind and watch the wavelets, letting micro-shifts in your ankles, knees, and core keep you upright. Balancing requires a kind of mirroring presence. With your attention open and your body attuned you adjust your alignment moment by moment in relation to the elements.

Now I’m no athlete and paddleboarding is not a hard thing to do, but it demands mindful somatic attention. You can’t check out. You have to remain flexible and responsive. You can’t grip the moment too tightly; overcorrect and you might topple.

Little wonder that doctors use balance tests to track aging. I knew an older person who understood this and spent a half hour each morning balancing on one foot. I’m not sure this is an effective way to address aging, but I admired the effort. Many elite athletes, gymnasts, soccer players, surfers excel due to their exceptional balance fine-tuned through thousands of hours of training and core strengthening exercises.

Dynamic Equilibrium

Balance can be mistaken for static passivity. In truth it’s the art of dynamic equilibriums—sensing and adjusting to the forces around us, engaging without overcommitting, noticing without clinging, offsetting without overcorrecting. Balance is never still.

Good leaders, like good paddleboarders, stay centered amid uncertainty. They navigate turbulence with presence and adaptability. Rather than impose rigid plans, they lead through attunement, coordination, and trust, shaping strategy in conversation with shifting realities.

Dynamic equilibrium lies at the heart of systems thinking. As Gregory Bateson observed, living systems stay viable through “self-corrective circuits” that constantly nudge variables back toward workable ranges. Donella Meadows calls these balancing (negative) feedback loops, forever dancing with reinforcing loops to keep the whole in a moving equilibrium. In the Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge extends the metaphor to organizations, healthy teams, in his view, “live at the edge of stability, realigning through feedback as conditions drift.” In short, resilient systems aren’t static; they absorb disturbance, reorganize, and realign, maintaining coherence precisely by staying in motion.

The Master doesn’t seek fulfillment.
Not seeking, not expecting,
she is present, and can welcome all things.
- Tao Te Ching

Find Your Keel

Now, I have a confession to make. I hadn’t been paddleboarding in a couple of years and when I first set out on the water, I forgot to attach the small keel to the bottom of the board. Standing felt wobbly enough, but when I tried to steer I simply spun in circles, drifting wherever the breeze took me. Frustrated I slid off, swam back to shore and found the keel lying on the sand.

Balance needs ballast. In leadership, the keel is our unseen depth, our values, principles, a community of accountability, a philosophy. Vision sets direction; the keel keeps us from capsizing while we adjust to the waves. It is this unseen depth that lets us move with grace.

So I’ll end this short post with a few questions for you.

• What is your keel?

• What unseen commitments keep you steady when the wind shifts?

• How do you cultivate a presence that can welcome all things and still steer toward what matters?

Thanks for reading. May you stay upright in tumultuous times.