Don’t take dolphins for granted

The true peace of God begins at any spot a thousand miles from the nearest land. — Joseph Conrad*

It’s been seven days since we’ve left port and I have been outside four times. I’ve missed every sunset, nearly every sunrise, and countless hours that could have been spent outside looking out at this wild world around me. I have plenty of excuses for this oversight but the fact remains that I am in one of the most beautiful places on earth and I have hardly looked out the window.

I’ve quickly stopped noticing incredible things around me. I understand why this desensitization occurs — it’d be difficult to get through the day if everything you saw blew your mind — but it almost seems worth it when you consider that the alternative is missing out on moments of life-affirming natural wonder.

A few hours ago, the bridge radioed down to us that they spotted dolphins off the starboard side. We might get a call about this once or twice a week so it’s not particularly rare, but it’s worth seeing every time. Dolphins will swim up to either side of the ship alone or in small groups, then ride our bow-wave for a few minutes before diving down or swimming away into some other direction in the directionless ocean (do you think a dolphin can have its favorite patch of ocean?).

I almost didn’t go out to see them! That maybe doesn’t sound like such a big deal, but for a brief moment I almost gave in to the side of me that would rather continue sitting in a chair and typing some useless bullshit than to step outside and see a bunch of giant, air-breathing water mammals jump in and out of the water. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve seen them, it is objectively always correct to go look at the dolphins.

I’m lucky I did, because four dolphins ended up swimming by and performing some impressive synchronized swimming routines for us. I might be reading into it a little deep here, but it really looked like they were doing all of this for fun . It’s a healthy reminder that if you’re going to spend most of your days doing something, make sure you enjoy doing it.

*I found this quote online months ago and appended it to a document I like to call “quotes.docx”. Unfortunately, I never bothered to look up who Joseph Conrad was and it now strikes me that there is something a little colonialish about his name. I’m pretty sure he also wrote some important books. Is Joseph Conrad out-of-vogue? Was he a rotten colonialist and my quoting him makes me a racist? Is my not knowing who Joseph Conrad is make me a dummy? These are the things I think about when I use quotes from people who I don’t know that much about. I’d have liked to search online before posting this quote but that’s just not not an option.