Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
A Closer Look at This Quote
There are days when life feels like standing on a small boat in open water, sky heavy, waves unpredictable, and everything in you wishing you could just order the sea to calm down. You look around for a switch, a lever, anything to make it all behave. There isn’t one. But you are holding the ropes.
"We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails."
First: "We cannot direct the wind."
On the surface, these words point to something simple and physical: you cannot stand on a boat and tell the wind which way to blow. No amount of shouting, begging, or planning will make it change direction just because you want it to. The air moves how it moves, with its own force and mood, brushing your face cool or pushing against you whether you feel ready or not.
Underneath that, the wind becomes everything in your life that arrives without asking your permission. You do not get to set the economy. You do not get to choose your childhood. You do not get to control other people’s choices, their love, their leaving, their sudden silence. Illness, accidents, layoffs, global events, even the weather that ruins the picnic you hoped would fix a relationship — they are all part of that wind you cannot steer. These words quietly admit something hard: you are not in charge of as much as you wish you were.
Then comes the turn: "but we can adjust the sails."
On the surface again, this is a practical move. If you are on a sailboat and the wind shifts, you do not argue with the sky. You move your hands. You pull a rope tighter, loosen another, angle the sail differently. You adapt the small pieces you can touch so the boat still moves, maybe not in a straight line, but still forward. You work with the wind instead of against it.
Beneath that action is a way of being in your own life. You cannot command circumstances, but you can decide how you meet them. You can choose your posture, your next step, your attitude, your strategy. "Adjusting the sails" is you changing your study plan after failing an exam, updating your budget after losing hours at work, seeking help when your mental health dips, or reimagining a dream that didn’t survive contact with reality. It’s not glamorous. It’s often small, quiet, and a bit uncomfortable, like dragging yourself out of bed earlier because you know you think more clearly before the day’s noise begins.
Picture one grounded moment: you’ve just been told you didn’t get the job you really wanted. The email sits on your screen like a weight. The wind just blew in a direction you hate. Adjusting the sails might look like allowing yourself to feel disappointed tonight, then tomorrow polishing your résumé, asking for feedback, or exploring a different path altogether. You still don’t control the hiring committee. But you do control whether you let this stop you in place or push you to rethink your route.
I think the quiet power of this quote is that it doesn’t flatter you. It doesn’t say everything is possible if you just believe. It says, honestly, that some forces are simply bigger than you — and still, you are not powerless. The dignity lives in your response, not in your ability to bend the universe to your will.
And there is a moment where these words don’t neatly fit: sometimes the wind is so violent that adjusting the sails is not about progress anymore, it’s just about surviving the storm. In those seasons, all you can do is tie things down, hold on, and wait. Even then, though, this saying still whispers a small, stubborn truth: you always have at least one tiny choice left, even if it is only how gently you speak to yourself while the boat rocks in the dark.
Where This Quote Came From
Bertha Calloway’s words come from a modern world that often promises control it can’t actually deliver. You live in a time of calendars, notifications, five-year plans, and endless advice on how to optimize everything from your sleep to your career. In that setting, saying "We cannot direct the wind" is almost rebellious. It cuts through the illusion that you can manage every outcome if you just try hard enough.
These words first circulated in an era when social change, economic shifts, and rapid technological growth were reshaping daily life. Communities were wrestling with civil rights, inequality, political tension, and questions about whose stories were remembered and whose were ignored. The feeling of being pushed around by forces beyond your reach was very real for many people, especially those whose history had been sidelined or erased.
In that context, "but we can adjust the sails" is not just about personal development. It is about agency in the midst of systems and histories that do not bend easily. It suggests that, even when the direction of the larger world isn’t in your hands, you can still carve out meaningful movement. You can organize, educate, preserve memory, and protect dignity, even if you cannot instantly change the larger "wind" of society.
The quote’s popularity today makes sense. It offers a grounded kind of hope: not the promise that everything will go your way, but the assurance that your choices still matter, especially when you feel small compared to what you’re up against.
About Bertha Calloway
Bertha Calloway, who was born in 1925 and died in 2017, was an American educator, historian, and museum founder who devoted her life to preserving African American history. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, at a time when segregation, discrimination, and quiet erasure of Black stories shaped everyday reality. Instead of accepting that silence, she chose to confront it.
Calloway is best remembered for founding the Great Plains Black History Museum in Omaha. She spent years collecting photographs, documents, and artifacts that proved, very concretely, that Black lives and achievements had always been part of the region’s story. Where society’s "wind" had pushed certain histories out of sight, she worked patiently to pull them back into view.
Her worldview shines through the quote "We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails." She understood that she could not single-handedly end racism or rewrite the past. Those were massive forces, far beyond any one person’s command. But she could adjust her own "sails" by creating space for truth, insisting on representation, and educating others.
In that sense, her life was a long, steady act of adjustment: working with whatever resources, attention, and support she had at a given moment, and still finding a way to move forward. Her legacy is a reminder that accepting what you can’t control does not mean giving up; it can be the starting point for thoughtful, courageous action.
