I Must Go Down to the Sea Again...

I’ve been heading down to the sea in the late evenings, when few people are around. The weather has been glorious, of course, and the sea is warm, but there is something else that calms me when I’m there.

The tide comes in and it goes out. It washes over my feet just as it washed over the feet of Canute. I can hear the surf whispering, ‘your problems matter but they are not the whole story’. All my worries are placed in a wider frame of reference, and though psychologist call this self-distancing, I prefer the Stoics’ word: wisdom.

Many philosophers have been drawn to the sea as a symbol of freedom and the mysterious depths of existence. They have found perspective and humility in it, recognising that we are both very small and also part of something greater. Simultaneously, the sea humbles and elevates us.

Not that many philosophers have referenced the sea directly (except Nietzsche perhaps). Rather, their understanding of reality finds expression in it. Take its beauty. For Kant, the idea of beauty is also the idea of the sublime. We experience something both physical and mental when standing before it. Physical, because we realise how small and vulnerable we are. Mental, because it is too vast for our imagination to grasp. We understand that our senses struggle to contain something so enormous, and our minds (our reason) longs to understand the truth that exists beyond what we immediately see.

But the sea does something else; it interrupts our endless striving. A few moments walking along the shore, and our attention is awed by its size. We stop and stare at its immensity. It promises nothing — it just is — and in so doing, it frees us from the tyranny of desire. Schopenhauer agreed with the Buddha that most of our suffering comes from endless wanting. We chase relationships, money, status, power and recognition. The sea reminds us that these cravings are valueless in the grand scheme of things.  As nature’s most expansive work of art, its aesthetic calms us.

If the sea asks nothing of us, we can stand on its edge, and simply be. The rhythmic constancy of the waves slows our breathing and empties our mind. It isn’t asking us what we have done, what we need to do and how we feel about it all. It exists. Huge and independent. It is its own thing. Heidegger called this experience Being. Being (rather than beings) is hard to explain; it is the factness of existence, and when we experience it, we are taken out of our individuality into a shared awareness of life. Standing on the shore, feeling the waves wash in and out, we are beyond wanting or analysis. We are attending to the reality of existence. Instead of asking ‘what do I want?’ we can ask ‘what is here?’ and rest in that.

This is because we are part of nature, as Spinoza said. We are expressions of the same reality that produced the oceans. We are not alone and for a moment, we stop being spectators of the natural world, and experience ourselves as participants in it. This shift is calming because loneliness often comes from imagining ourselves as separate.

The sea also restores a sense of proportion. When we spend all day in the office or at home, and certainly too much time on our phones, our problems occupy almost our entire field of vision. A walk on the shore expands that field. It doesn’t make our worries disappear, but it places them along side the tides that have washed in and out for millions of years.  This perspective isn't nihilistic; it isn’t denying our reality or our worth, but it is liberating us from a form of myopia.

Of course, there is a paradox here. The sea makes us feel insignificant yet when we leave it, we feel restored and alive. How can both be true?

Most anxiety comes from believing we are the centre of everything. When the sea dislodges us from that imagined centre, it relieves us of carrying the whole world on our shoulders. The vastness of the ocean tells us something no self-help book can: we are not the measure of reality. Rather, we belong within a reality that is far greater than ourselves.

That’s why generations of thinkers have found the sea both awesome and educative. It enlarges our vision and reminds us that while our individual lives matter, they unfold within a world of immense age, beauty and mystery. This balance between humility and belonging is the sea’s great power to restore our peace of mind.