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Dying Selflessness / The Honesty Policy / Man Overboard
Preface to my newsletter: Jessi and I have been dealing with more than our fair share of family matters here recently. I know many of you feel my sentiment! The time I’ve spent underwater recently is kind of like the water level in Lake Mead and Lake Powell… Severely low and in danger of not perpetuating energy. I may strap on a tank and jump in the nearest pool when I’m done writing. Actually I feel like this is more venting than writing and the chronicles are coming from a disgruntled old man not a Captain. That said, if you care to indulge me…
Selfless: ‘concerned more with the needs and wishes of others than one’s own‘. Wow, that seems like an old-fashioned utopian dream. Selfless has been replaced by selfies. I’ve been reading Tom Green lately and I strongly recommend that you do too. His most recent weekly article is about Darwinism mixing with selfies. The result is ‘killfies’: I’m not saying that humans should be like an ant in a colony. However, I can’t stop thinking about how different our colony would look if we were all actually selfless! Silly me, some of my thoughts are just preposterous.
Remember the old proverb ‘honesty is the best policy’? I know, my recall along those lines is a little vague also. In this splendid new era, dis and mis-information are now the norm. There are human bottom dwellers out there that get paid a lot of money just to write B.S. Why? Because we inhale and ingest it. We devour it like a big goliath grouper swallowing its prey. Evidently we, like they, don’t see the sharp pointed hooks hidden inside the meal. When did we start assuming that everything we read is factual? Seems to me accepting is easier than questioning. Who doesn’t want to take the easy route? Wait, where does the easy route end at??
My last dive was a few days back and the utilization of the man overboard button on a GPS was paramont to my approach to the dive. We received a call at the shop from a gentleman whose trolling motor bracket failed and his 8 foot long, expensive trolling motor ended up in 25 feet of water a couple miles off of Caxambas Pass. My first question to him was how soon after you lost the motor did you mark the spot on your GPS? He replied that he hit the man overboard button within a minute. If you ever lose anything valuable overboard save the mark ASAP! Narrowing the area of searching greatly improves the probabilities for a recovery. I calculated the wind and tide at the time he lost the motor and calculated that he probably drifted about 60 feet to the north before he saved the spot. I started my expanding circle search about that far to the south of his mark in 5 feet of visibility. On my third circle I pegged the big white trolling motor! He and his buddy were so thrilled they sparked up victory cigars on the ride back in. It’s very gratifying to recover lost items especially when it brings sheer joy to the person who lost the item!
Normally it’s not a good idea to jump off of a ship… But if the ship is named ‘Humanity’… Perhaps we should contemplate going man overboard? I’d rather be floating in the sea then on a ship heading towards an iceberg or a oyster bar or a waterfall or a bigger ship or a torpedo… the list goes on!
Thanks for reading my therapy. Don’t internalize it… Process, laugh and get your ass underwater!!
Until Then, Live Love Dive. —Jeff
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