Safe

Sitting on the plane home from a recent trip, the guy next to me asked, “You wanna see something fun?” He immediately began pushing virtual buttons on his mini computer. It took a while for him to find the file, but when he did, an image appeared. On the screen was a person and a paddle board. About twenty feet behind the board was a dark shadow.

It turned out that there was more than one photo. In fact there was a whole sequence. In each one, the dark shadow got closer and closer to his board. “I'm the Clueless Paddle Board Guy,” he said, as he described what happened to produce these photographs. He told me he was out on his board near a beach off the coast of Massachusetts when a drone showed up over his head. He said he thought it was out there looking for sharks since a seal had been taken there the day before. Thinking no more of it, he returned to the beach. When he did, he was greeted by the drone driver. It was then that he learned why the drone had been so interested in him. He stood on the beach stunned as the drone pilot showed him pictures of himself trailed by a dark shadow identified by the drone flier as a twelve foot Great White Shark. He told me the drone operator had shared the photos and that they had gone viral. That's when he was dubbed “The Clueless Paddle Boarder.”

We talked for a while about his fifteen minutes of fame as he recounted the titles of the magazines he had appeared in. I think it was People Magazine that had introduced the idea that he was “clueless.” He told me he didn't like being thought of that way, and we laughed about creating memes with his photos, but as we did, I kept coming back to one thing; he was alive.

One of the scariest parts in the sequence of photos is the one that shows that, after Shark passes him, it turns back, perhaps for another look. We talked about how surf boards can look like Seals from under water and how so many people have theorized that this is one of the reason why surfers get attacked. This lead him to tell me about the kind of board he uses. It's shorter than most paddle boards and not as buoyant. That means he has to be even more present as he is paddling. Otherwise, he will lose his balance and fall. As he spoke about the focus and attention required for him to do what he was doing, I started to struggle with the idea that he was clueless. In fact it seemed that his was just the opposite of clueless, and quite clued into what he was doing.

He spoke about how much he loved paddle boarding, and how that morning was the perfect combination of wake and waves. He had been waiting for just such a day, and was so happy that it had finally arrived. He said he was aware that Sharks were in the area, but decided to go out anyway. That's when he spoke about how important he though it was to live your life like you're dying rather than always worrying about what might kill you. This reminded me of the time I asked by a friend of mine if I would be devastated if she died. I told her that of courses I would, but it would be easier for me if I knew she died doing something she loved; something that mattered to her. Paddle boarding and what he experienced when I did it mattered to him.

It turned out his name was Roger, and he told that, in retrospect he probably shouldn't have gone out. He knew what he was doing was risky, but I kept coming back to the fact that he was alive. It was when he stated to ponder out loud why the life guards hadn't raised the alarm when the drone flier saw what was going on that I said, “But you're an alive person.”

It was then that we started to wonder what would have happened to him if the folks on the beach had tried to warn him about the Shark. Remembering the scene from the movie Jaws when the Sharif panics, rushing everyone out of the water only to find that what he thought was a Shark was only two kids with a fake fin, I said sometimes raising the alarm is the last thing you want to do. He said he didn't know how he would have reacted. He said that he would like to believe that he would have stayed calm, but we both shuttered thinking about what might have happened if he hadn't. What if he lost his focus? What if his concentration was broken? The outcome might have been quite different from the one he was living. The only other option for him for that morning would have been for him to remain on the beach.

All this got me thinking about how often my culture invites me to do just that. Every day I am invited to keep my focus on all the things that could go wrong; All the risks I face as I live my life. Metaphorically, my culture invites me to pay far more attention to the possibility that there is a shark in the water then to consider what I might gain from taking my paddle board out anyway. The thing about Roger is that he was not absentmindedly blundering into the water. He knew what he was doing. He knew how to balance on his board. He knew how to find a wave and ride it back into the beach. Had he known there was Great White in that water at that time, he wouldn't have gone out, but he couldn't have known.

The question I am left with is this: Will I stop taking my metaphoric paddle board out into the water just because there might be Sharks or do I go out anyway? Unfortunately, by culture's proscription is to stay on the beach. Today, I chose to listen to my own words to my friend, paying attention not to the possible Sharks in the water, but the value of the experiences I have when I chose, like Roger the perhaps not-so-clueless-paddle-board-guy, to leave the beach. I can choose to spend my life worried about the unseen sharks that lurk just below the surface, or I can notice the beauty of the water that shimmers just beyond the safety of the shore.

There will always be risks and there wall always be choices to make. Perhaps the most important thing I learned from Roger's story came from the fact that, even while the drone pilot was watching the Shark circle around him, he was experiencing an amazing morning out on the sparkling water. Sometimes what we don't know is just is impotent as what we do. Perhaps being “clueless” about one thing is what keeps us open to and aware of something else. Roger is an alive person, and perhaps he is even more alive for having come so close to a Shark he didn't even know was there.

#paddleboarderandshark