Spend Some Time in the Crow’s Nest
The world is big and constantly moving and full of troubling events. But if we don’t allow all the negativity to distract us, we can find calm among the stormy seas of life
By Ben Timmermans, Representative
I’ve been reading Herman Melville’s epic novel Moby Dick. There’s a spot in chapter 35 where the main character, Ishmael, describes what it’s like to take a shift on watch in the crow’s nest—the highest point of the ship that allows sailors to see farther out to sea and warn of any upcoming dangers or land.
This part of the book caused me to stop and think about our own lives and how it applies to us today. I’ve copied the passage below, with emphasis added to the part that made me think.
There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks, striding along the deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while beneath you and between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters of the sea, even as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous Colossus at old Rhodes. There you stand, lost in the infinite series of the sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship indolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you into languor. For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime uneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras with startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into unnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt securities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what you shall have for dinner—for all you meals for three years and more are snugly stowed away in casks, and your bill of fair is immutable.
Melville was describing the life of one of the sailors on watch, with nothing to distract him except what was right in front of him—no phone beeping with an update or social media notification.
The description of a sailor, sitting in a crow’s nest, with the busyness of the world beneath him, but not totally affecting him, seems relevant for us today. The world is big and constantly moving and full of troubling events. But most of these events do not, and will not, affect your life in any direct, meaningful way—COVID being a major exception.
Want to destress? Stop watching the news for a week and unplug from social media. You’ll quickly find that life gets a lot more manageable without all the added noise and stress from world events—no “monsters” swimming below you as it were.
The 24/7 news cycle is always vying for our attention with the latest bit of human excitement or suffering. But we are not designed to constantly take in all of the suffering and excitement that happens around the world—it’s just too much.
We’re designed to handle the joys and sufferings in our own life—which can be difficult enough at times—not the lives of 7.5 billion other people. With COVID dominating the news cycle for much of the last two years, and now the awful human suffering we’re seeing in Ukraine, it’s easy to lose any sense of hope that the world is an okay place where good things can and do happen.
What can you do? Tune out the news, turn off notifications, unplug your device, and regain your agency. We always have little things nagging at us all day every day, and our phones don’t deserve to be one of them. Do not let the technology control you!
Instead, spend some time in the crow’s nest, and focus on what’s right in front of you. Let all the news and social media feeds swim on by.
And don’t worry about missing anything. It’ll still be there when you come back down.