There is one thing I am the most scared of doing. Something that does terrify me at a really deep level. That thing is sailing. I love watching the water, I could stare at the sea or at rivers for hours and hours on end. It’s so powerful, it can be so tranquil, for me it’s so mysterious, and the thought of spending time on it fills me with abject terror.
Can I just start by saying that nothing bad, that I am aware of, has ever happened to me on water. I have never had a near drowning experience, for example, and I can swim reasonably well . I do suffer from travel sickness which is much more pronounced on water, and I do have a phobia of being sick, but there are tablets for all that and they do work so it isn’t that. It isn’t those things that fill me with terror.
I think it’s the fact that when you are on the water, it is like you are untethered. There is nothing solid to hold onto. The boat you’re on is on the water, the moving water, so you’re not on something solid. And there is a lot that is unknown under the water. I remember, in a previous role I held, being told that there was a lot of detritus underneath the water surrounding a pier that was dangerous for anyone who jumped off the end of the pier. There is also the unknown depth of the water. In a swimming pool, you know when you’re getting out of your depth. In the sea or a river, you don’t. The seabed or riverbed can fall away from you instantaneously. One minute it’s up to your waist and the next it’s over your head. And I don’t like that, I don’t like that uncertainty. That potential for a dangerous shock. I know this is likely an allegory for my approach to life in general. Actually, it isn’t a likely allegory it is the allegory for my life. I love certainty, I struggle hugely with uncertainty and I am an attempted reformed control freak, but it’s a struggle. I have had some major exogenous shocks in my life – deaths, divorce, cancer, redundancies, accidents, sudden life-threatening allergies…the list goes on. It’s all added up to a fear of uncertainty because it hasn’t brought me anything good. So, I guess for me the uncertainty around what is under the water, what its depth is and the general sense of mystery around it for me makes it rather unsettling for me.
I have a fear of enclosed spaces, and I do equate drowning with it being like an enclosed space – it’s all a situation where I can’t easily breath. And not being able to breath easily terrifies me. I was born with a collapsed lung, so who knows? Maybe it’s to do with that. But it’s something I’ve always had and has no apparently obvious reason for it. I do only have three phobias, by the way, spiders, enclosed spaces, and being physically sick. I’m not riddled with phobias! Not that I’m judging anyone who is, I get it. The point is, the fact that one can drown in water means that the pastime of sailing does not appeal to me I’m afraid. I’ve seen people go over and under while they’ve been kayaking – that’s heart attack material for me no matter how appealing upright kayaking looks to me. Friends of ours have a beautiful boat and I have been on it a number of times, but preferably on the Norfolk Broads where I can see either side of the bank and know that I can get it it quickly even if there is a fast tide. I have been on the Suffolk rivers, they are lovely and the pastime has been beautiful but it helps that I can see land easily even if I know I can’t easily get to it because of the width of the water. But the sea…that’s a no. I have sailed on the sea, I’ve been on a catamaran on the Aegean and it was blissful, but I knew I was on tenterhooks the whole time.
When you’re out on the open sea, you are even more untethered. There is no land you can see around you, just the vastness of the sea. And I’ve never sailed on an ocean, I can’t imagine how that would make me feel! If I see the ocean on the television, it fills me with the sense of its vastness, its loneliness really. It’s emptiness even though it’s far from empty beneath the surface. And there we are again, the mystery of what is beneath the surface that you cannot see. The calmness above (usually!) and the teeming madness and apparent chaos beneath the surface with the multitude of species existing beneath. It is another world entirely, one humans are not welcome in given our inability to exist under water. It is a world that we do not fully understand, with species within it that we have yet to encounter. Unlike the skies that we fly in, we cannot reach the depths of the oceans. It is an unknown space, an unpredictable space, and for most people it is not one they want to explore. There seems to be a preference to explore the heavens rather than the depths of the oceans – probably because seeing one piques our interest, but we cannot see the other so it is more easily forgotten. Or it is more frightening because it is unseen, unknown. And then you have to factor in the vagaries of the weather. The sudden storms that happen on land but you can tether yourself to something, you can hide out from storms on land. But there is nowhere to hide from a storm at sea. You are at the mercy of nature and with absolutely no control over the outcome. You can’t outrun a storm at sea is my impression, instead you are tossed and turned about on the waves as though you are inconsequential. Nothing but a play thing for Mother Nature, punishing you for daring to be somewhere that you shouldn’t. Be somewhere that you are not physically equipped to survive. Is it any wonder that the gods of the sea in Roman and Greek mythology can only be described as ‘sort of’ benevolent because they would have these major temper tantrums that caused huge destruction at sea. Or that they were on a par with Zeus and Jupiter as they ruled the sea while Zeus and Jupiter ruled the earth.
Like a human body (50-75%), the earth is 71% water, 96% of which is in the oceans which indicates their depth in places. Is our reluctance to fully explore the depths of the ocean like our reluctance to fully explore our own depths? Our reluctance often to look below the surface, confront our shadow selves? The fact that we don’t really understand our shadow side, seeing it as something dangerous and unknown. Best left alone. And yet in exploring our shadow side we understand ourselves so much better, we get the fuller picture of ourselves and we can integrate the darker sides, accept those insecurities and those uncertainties to show to ourselves who we truly are as a whole entity, not the parts it is comfortable for us to see. Does this reflect how much better off we would be if we explored the depths of the ocean? Would we understand the earth better as a whole? Give us a much deeper understanding of the planet on which we live, maybe a greater appreciation of it and even some of the answers for how we progress with our lives on it. Rather than looking at something that is really unhospitable to us in the stars.
For me, it’s certainly something to consider. When it comes to exploring the oceans, though, please don’t expect me to be a member of one of the research groups!
Louisa Simpson 