The Boy and the Sea

Reading Time: 4 minutes

From: The Silent Questions, pages 256-258.
by Doug Marman

A young boy sat on the edge of the wharf, looking out over the gray water. His legs dangled free in the air, kicking back and forth. This was the place where he sat every day to listen to the sounds that the wind carried and to watch the way the waves danced. The sea was his friend, and he came to visit, just as he visited the geese in Mrs. Thatcher’s yard and the seagulls behind Mr. Danver’s Fish Market.

But the sea was different. The sea seemed to change every day, and yet, somehow, was exactly the same. It seemed endless and huge, yet at times you forgot it was even there, and it would startle you when you noticed it again.

The boy felt small when he played on the shore, looking for stones and shells. He knew what the seagulls must feel like when he watched them picking at their pieces of fish, because the sea had a presence, and at times he felt that it was really the sea who visited him to see how he grew and the way he changed every day.

Perhaps this was why the boy thought that the sea was ancient and wise and that it knew the answers to the questions he might ask. Maybe this was what drew him into talking with an old sea captain who he’d never seen before.

“How far is it to the other side of the sea?” the boy asked, his thoughts filled with images of the exotic lands that might exist there.

“The sea is the sea,” said the captain. “It has no sides. Only land has sides.”

“You mean it goes forever?”

“Yes,” the captain answered, “with little bits of land along the way.”

“But Mr. Danver said that ships have sailed over all the world and explored all the sea,” the boy said, not quite sure. “Haven’t they?”

The captain was rewinding a new coil of rope the way he liked it, so it would flow smoothly and not catch or kink. He looked at the boy.

“How can you tell if you have been to a certain place in the sea? The sea has no places, it only has water and waves and a rhythm. And it has a voice too, if you know how to listen.

“Yes, you could say, I’m about halfway between Hawaii and Japan, for example, but those are land places, not sea places. You can spot the stars and watch the sun, but those are sky places.

“People forget that this world is mostly sea, but the sea is always moving. This is not the same sea here today as when I was last here, fifteen years ago.
That was a stormy sea, too wild even for the whales. So how can anyone say they have seen all the sea? The sea is endless and always moving. Only the shores can be known.”

The boy sat there, kicking his legs, wondering why he’d always thought this was the same sea each day that greeted him.

“But Earth doesn’t go on forever,” the boy said, still thinking and trying to understand. “So, how can the sea go forever?”

“You are still thinking land-wise,” the captain answered. “But when you are out upon the sea with no land in sight and only the stars in the sky—then the sea is forever. It has no places and has no time except night and day. These people who try to figure out the sea with their science and books, what do they know?

“They go to work every morning. They go to some place and come back to their home every night. They listen to the clocks telling them the time, they follow their roads to cities and stores, and these places are always there. They never move. It is easy to be sure about things that never change.

“And so, they make maps—millions of maps—but only land maps, with names that fool people, like the Indian Ocean, or the North China Sea. What do they know of the North China Sea? It is not one, but a thousand seas churning together, making new seas every day. They know the land, so they think they know the sea. The sea laughs at their maps.”

“Is that why people can’t live out on the sea forever and have to always come back ashore, because they can’t understand the sea and the sea thinks they are a bunch of pretty-pusses?”

The captain laughed. “Yes, I think you’re right.”

“But you have lived for a long time on the sea, haven’t you?” the boy asked.

“Yes,” said the captain, feeling very old.

“Where are you going next?”

“I don’t know yet,” the captain said. “My ship is for hire.”

“How long will you be out on the sea?”

“That depends,” said the captain, “on who I take, of course.”

“Would you take me?” asked the boy.

The captain smiled. “Sure,” he said.

“How long would it be then?”

The captain paused. He looked at the boy, and then at the sea. His thoughts rushed out far across time and across his memories. He thought of the years.

“It would be a long, long time,” he said to the boy. “To answer the questions that you ask about the sea would never be a short journey.”

The boy looked out at the horizon. Suddenly his legs stopped and hung motionless. He watched a seagull flying back to shore. He stood up slowly and looked at the captain. “When I am older, I think I will go out to sea.” Then he ran up the wharf, toward town.

The captain understood the depth and wisdom of that decision, for he too had once been such a boy. And he knew that when it was time, the sea would send a teacher.

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www.spiritualdialogues.com