Should you trust your gut?
Should you trust your gut?
I’m so rarely brave
I was still seasick when I got home from the marina at 6 p.m. that Saturday. And cold. I went to the kitchen and toasted bread, smearing the slice in Irish gold butter. Leaning on the countertop, still in my waterproof gear, I let the good taste of salt and cream warm me. There’s a reason it’s called comfort food.
The grip of the keelboat that day had tied me into one of the surefire knots I’d been practicing in the sailing class. The double hitch, the bowline. It would take time to unwind. The day had been blustery—25 knots of apparent wind—and 49 degrees F. I’d been far from my usual physical comforts—a spacious office, pleasant neighborhood, and bougie workout studio.
Initially, I’d been enthusiastic about taking the weekend certification course (ASA 101 at Seattle Sailing Club), a gift from my thoughtful partner, who has also been learning to sail. I wanted to try. We could do it together! I began to daydream about terrific sailing trips. I knew it would be hard, but I’m no stranger to the elements, I cycle and ski. Besides, my father is a kind and competent mariner—he raced sailboats in his early 20s—and I’d grown up near the sea, it wasn’t too late to learn.
“It will be humbling,” I reasoned. To be a beginner. But in a good way. And that’s what I believed until an hour into our class voyage I left the tiller (essentially, the steering stick) for a perch on the starboard, and a despairing seasickness swelled inside me. Just like that, the emerald Salish Sea became a dark, menacing rollercoaster.
“I’m fine,” I tried to tell myself, avoiding eye contact with my classmates and our instructor, Chip. I tightened the sheet for a close haul. I tried my best to coordinate with the others, so we wouldn’t capsize. This was one of my fears, tipping over, falling in. Ironically, though I was safe in the cockpit, nausea pulled on me like a riptide, I couldn’t escape submersion in the waves.
It occurred to me, later, that my sense of discombobulation might resemble culture shock. Sailing is another country; maritime terminology is old and technical. Even though I’d read the textbook, Chip’s rapid commands gave me a feeling of confusion and urgency. I felt incompetent and foreign.
After the buttered bread, I sulked. Sunday’s forecast was rain and a chance of vomiting—that made me anxious. There were also written and tactical exams. I’d rather work on my novel or write this newsletter. Fold laundry. Even Costco on a weekend! Anything but nausea. Did I have to finish the course?
Two weeks later, I shared my experience with a few women, most of whom are working mothers, around a table. When I got to this point in the story, they were nodding with sympathetic expressions. I had led them—and myself—to a sensible conclusion. Why should I continue with this unhappy, entirely optional activity? If I preferred to read or write or do housework on my day off instead of producing hot saliva and dread while avoiding submersion or hypothermia, no one could say my choice wasn’t a reasonable form of self-preservation.
Yet here’s the problem, then and again. Motion sickness is sensory disorientation. You feel sick because your eyes and ears are getting mixed messages about what’s around you. There are interesting clinical words for this, something about the malfunction of the vestibular system, the inner ear, and the oppositional ocular orientation, the eyes. But even if I couldn’t point to the origins of my discomfort, I was sure I wouldn’t feel reoriented by a trip to Costco.
Unnamed writers at WebMD explain that motion sickness is an ancient ailment.[1] “You’re part of a long tradition,” they write. It’s hardly reassuring that this sickness isn’t contagious. That it resolves when the journey is over, or shortly after. What if the journey is never really over? Why is it difficult to get my bearings when I’m sideways?
The idiom, “get your bearings,” originated in the 16th century, and is a reference to using a compass, possibly a sextant, to confidently navigate. Bearings. Do you feel less or more seasick when you are confident and know where you’re going? When you feel a sense of control?
Women, who are either not often sailors or underrepresented as sailors,[2] are either assumed to, or actually do, become motion sick more often than men.[3] Pregnant women are especially vulnerable.[3] Interestingly, morning sickness resembles seasickness. It also resolves when the journey is over, or even in the second trimester. Does seasickness help explain the lack of gender diversity in maritime fields? Or, has possible seasickness been a reason to exclude women?
“Sailing needs to change,” Chip told us, he promised me and the other woman in the course that we’d have no trouble landing instructor jobs, though we hadn’t asked. “We need more women,” he said. I don’t disagree, but the comment made me sigh. I suddenly remembered reluctantly raising my glass to a sailor’s toast that had grated on me as a young adult—“To the ships and the women of our lives, may the first be well-rigged and the second well-manned.” Perhaps I hadn’t taken to seafaring in effort to dodge the discomforts of sexism.
On Sunday, I woke up early, anxious and angry. I began to cry. The children hugged me. My partner hugged me. My gut told me to stay home. I boiled an egg. I packed a sandwich, fruit, and mints. I made a thermos of ginger tea. I drank coffee and chewed Bonine tablets, a type of antihistamine that promised to prevent motion sickness with less drowsiness than Dramamine. And without analyzing why, I left.
As I took the familiar roads to Shilshole Bay, calmness overtook me. I was listening to the radio, a show about a decidedly not-calm topic, another Ice Age in Europe and the sinking of coastal cities due to climate change.
“It’s not unlikely,” said an expert, in a pleasing voice. They sounded like a smart friend, like Ezra Klein or Brad Listi. “I’d be misleading you if I said otherwise.” The expert with the pleasant voice went on to explain that a possible effect of melting polar icebergs, specifically, was the weakening of an important Atlantic Ocean current, known as AMOC, which transports warm water from the southern hemisphere to the north. AMOC keeps Europe’s climate moderate. Temperate. Should AMOC slow to a stop, coldness would befall Europe and raise sea levels along the North American coast. Already coastal cities are in danger. This would spell catastrophe.
The problem, the expert said, was that the indicators of a slowdown were not completely understood. Moreover, climate-related contingencies could accelerate the process, or not. In other words, there were mixed signals. “I know that feeling,” I thought. “It makes me nauseated.” And disorientation about AMOC’s possible collapse was preventing policymakers from implementing social protections in advance.
If AMOC stopped, the average temperature in Western Europe would drop ~35 degrees in a year. “Everywhere from London to Amsterdam would be uninhabitable,” the expert said, sounding as if they couldn’t quite believe the forecast themselves. “And rising water levels could sink major cities on the eastern coast of North America.” I imagined New York City underwater, like the fictional Atlantis, and shuddered.
“But would this necessarily lead to the extinction of life? Not necessarily,” they went on, as if the possibility of tremendous invention had just occurred to them, despite everything. “I do believe humans are prone to resilience and ingenuity even when they’ve been wrong-headed and obstinate along the way.”
This diagnosis made me laugh and I wrote it down, even though it was all so absurd and I’m usually suspicious of generalizations.
I’d arrived at the marina and was peaceful. Unhurried. Not worried. In retrospect, I believe the antihistamine was responsible for my relaxed mood and this is a helpful side effect. I was early so I sat in the car and worked on this newsletter. Then, curious about AMOC, I amused myself with internet searches. There was a Science article.[4] A film.[5] Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the radio transcript. Who was the expert?
Later that day, I passed both the written and tactical exams with 100%—the only one with a perfect score, though the other woman in my class earned a 99%. “‘A’ students,” she smiled at me. I grinned back. I’m definitely proud. After all, I almost quit. I called all my people to share the good news. Then I visited my parents on their boat and thoroughly enjoyed talking shop with my dad. He told me about a time when his boat went keel over and he spent hours bailing water, somehow, he didn’t need to abandon ship. Another time, he did. Sailors have yarns. And the sewing metaphor isn’t inaccurate, my dad sewed ripped sails, too.
“We had to reef the mainsail,” I said. “Because of the wind.” “What’s it called when you are still, facing the wind,” he asked me. “Irons,” I said. “What brings the mainsail up the mast?” “Halyard,” I said. “What are the ribbons attached to the luff?” “Tell-tails,” I said. “I called for the tack a few times. I liked being at the helm best. Controlling the direction of the boat. I didn’t get sick then.”
As I reflect, I wonder if my disorientation and anxiety weren’t similar to culture shock, but an effect of fear. In the weeks since the course finished, I’ve begun to feel a deep respect for anyone who has not retreated—or couldn’t retreat—to cushy places when faced with the sick feeling of mixed signals, the maddening discomfort of discrimination, of objectification. Deep freezes. Erasure. When the journey never ends and the malaise never goes away.
I’m so rarely brave. If I trust my gut, I will stay at home and eat bread with salted butter forever. Because I can. But I will probably go sailing again, or something like it. I will remember the toast from that unnamed expert. Resilience and ingenuity are possible even when we’ve been wrong-headed and obstinate along the way. Steering the boat can prevent seasickness. Are you ready to tack?
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Book recommendation
Annie Bot by Sierra Greer kept me up late. Devastating. Fast-paced. Speculative. Subtle world-building. Deeply disturbing. Emotionally poignant. About gender and power and intelligent robots and which vision of humanness human-centered design might be centering. My favorite book for, like, two decades was Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Annie Bot is billed by publisher Mariner Books as a novel for people who loved that book. Their recommendation system is working. (Rated R)
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Thank you for reading The Gift.
Until next time,
Monika
The Gift
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References
[1] Editorial collective and Nayana Ambardekar, MD (reviewer) (September 2022) “Motion Sickness,” WebMD. https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/ear-infection/motion-sickness
[2] “Women in Sailing: Strategic Review” (December 2019) World Sailing Trust. Report. https://1pr9da.n3cdn1.secureserver.net/wp-content/uploads/WSTWiSStrategicReviewReport2019-25819.pdf
[3] Hemmerich, Wanja A.; Shahal, Avner; Hecht, Heiko (2019). “Predictors of visually induced motion sickness in women,” Displays. 58. Elsevier BV: 27–32. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0141938218301045
[4] René M. van Westen et al. (2024). “Physics-based early warning signal shows that AMOC is on tipping course.” Science Advances. Vol. 6, Issue 10. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adk1189
[5] The Day After Tomorrow (2004) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After_Tomorrow