THE OCEAN DOESN’T CARE

Living in the middle of Michigan all my life, without so much as a lake within 20 miles, I used to yearn to spend time at the sea shore. We have been fortunate enough to do that a few times, and I especially enjoyed beaches in Maine and Mexico.

Then, A few years ago, I went on a cruise in the northeast U.S. leaving from Boston. We cruised up the coast to Maine and over to Nova Scotia. On a bus tour of Halifax, the tour director took us past a cemetery and told that many of the bodies recovered from the sea after the Titanic went down are buried there.     What a solemn thought.

The very next day we set sail on the return trip to Boston. An hour or so out, the North Sea became vicious. Although the cruise ship was stable, the huge gray, angry waves and the gray angry sky were positively frightening. It was not hard to imagine the night that the Titanic went down about there. I stopped thinking of the ocean as friendly and inviting.

The Ocean Doesn’t Care

The ocean doesn’t care if you sink or swim.It doesn’t care for day, night or the wishes of man.

The ocean doesn’t care if the object it batters is a log or a liner, a human, or a house.

Its constant heaving and writhing is mindless of the lives beneath it and those along its shores.

It doesn’t care if you use it, abuse it, need it, love it or fear it. It doesn’t care if you consider it beautiful, ugly, violent or serene; or if you consider it at all.

Like the sun, the moon, the wind, and earth itself…the ocean doesn’t care