The Joke My Father Never Stopped Telling.
There’s a joke my father loved more than any other. He told it so many times over the years that I could almost lip-sync the words before he finished. Yet every single time, he would laugh like it was the first. That was my dad — joyful, sincere, and never tired of sharing a story that made people think.
The joke goes like this:
A man is caught in a terrible flood. As the water rises, a neighbour comes by in a boat and calls out, “Jump in, I’ll save you!”
The man says, “No, God will save me.”
Later, a helicopter hovers above and the rescuer yells down, “Grab the rope!”
Again, the man replies, “No, God will save me.”
Eventually, the water rises too high, and the man drowns. When he reaches heaven, he asks God, “Why didn’t you save me?”
And God says, “I sent you a boat and a helicopter — what more did you want?”
Dad would laugh so hard every time he told it — not just at the humour, but at the truth behind it.
Over time, I realised why that story stuck with me so deeply. It’s not just about faith; it’s about how we expect faith to look. We ask God, the universe, or our higher self for help, but then we close ourselves off to the ways that help might actually arrive. We imagine divine intervention will come wrapped in light and miracles — when sometimes, it’s a phone call from a friend, a gut feeling, a closed door that redirects us, or even a stranger offering a hand.
We don’t always recognise that the universe is already answering us.
My dad is a spiritual man, and that spirit ran in our family. His mother — my grandmother — was a card reader and tea leaf reader, deeply intuitive and connected to something beyond the ordinary. Dad used to tell me stories about her — how she just knew things, how she trusted the unseen.
Not long ago, during an ancestral healing meditation, I fell into a deep sleep and had a dream about her. It was so vivid. She gave me a message in this dream using a car as a symbol. I was driving, gripping the wheel tightly, anxious to stay in control. Suddenly, she took over — calm, fierce, utterly in command. She drove like a race car driver, weaving through every obstacle with precision and confidence. I just sat there, wide-eyed, watching her take charge.
The message was clear: Let go. Trust the divine. You don’t have to control every turn.
When I think of that dream — and my dad’s favourite joke — they both speak the same language. We ask for guidance and then try to steer the outcome ourselves. We forget that surrender doesn’t mean giving up; it means giving over — letting something wiser, higher, and more loving take the wheel.
In Taoist philosophy, there’s a concept called Wu Wei, which translates loosely to “non-doing” or “effortless action.” It doesn’t mean inaction — rather, it’s about flowing with life instead of against it. Like a river, it knows how to find its way around rocks without forcing a path. When we practice Wu Wei, we stop fighting, stop resisting, and start aligning with the natural rhythm of the universe.
Maybe that’s what my dad’s joke was always trying to say — in his lighthearted, humble way. That divine help is already around us, but we need to release our rigid expectations of how it should arrive. That miracles often wear ordinary clothes. That trust sometimes looks like laughter, and surrender can look like sitting back and letting someone else — maybe even the divine — drive for a while.
So, whenever I hear someone tell that old flood joke, I smile. Because for me, it’s not just a story — it’s my father’s wisdom disguised as humour. It’s a reminder that faith isn’t waiting for a sign from the sky. It’s seeing the boat and the helicopter right in front of us, and knowing that maybe, just maybe, that’s God’s hand reaching out.
