Gift From The Sea

Many people consider what Lindbergh calls “planetal awareness” (140), a concern for the problems of the world, a marker of ethical and spiritual virtue. For instance, there is a common belief that one should care about foreign famines and wars and act to help the victims of these disasters. Likewise, society might question someone who had no interest in the “long, divisive and conscience-searing war” (150) in Vietnam or was not affected by the horror seen there. Yet, for Lindbergh, this assumption of virtue is problematic. Although it seems that one should care about global issues and that doing so is constitutive of a well-adjusted person, concern with global affairs can, she suggests, become a form of escape. It can become a way of evading a deeper and more immediate spiritual responsibility to both the present moment and toward oneself.

The problem does not lie with compassion itself. It is natural, and to some degree inevitable, to feel compassion upon becoming aware of other people's suffering. Nor is there anything wrong with the instinct of wanting to help alleviate that suffering. Rather, Lindbergh posits that the problem comes from the fact that since most people cannot, in practice, do anything about the vast majority of global suffering, they are pushed into a “compromise” (141). As they cannot help the innumerable individuals who need assistance, they “simplify the many into an abstraction called the mass” (141). Similarly, since people cannot cope with the immense complexity and challenge of the present, they consolidate their temporal concern with the world into “a simplified dream of the future” (141).

People, thus, slough off their initially legitimate concern for individuals and the present into the abstract pursuit of a vaguely defined better future for everyone. Lindbergh attempts to draw attention to this point by highlighting tragedy and suffering in her own life. As she explains, her husband’s death occurred when they had just entered the “argonauta” stage of their relationship, two decades after she left Captiva Island. Thus, with this individual anecdote, Lindbergh encourages the reader to focus on the immediate and the personal before taking on the problems of the world.

Lindbergh also argues that this process of abstraction from the personal and the present allows people to feel that they are doing something about the world and being ethical. But this abstract pseudo-compassion becomes a constant distraction. As Lindbergh says, “Because we cannot solve our own problems right here at home, we talk about problems out there in the world” (141), using a concern for the future of the masses to evade the challenging questions of existence in the here and now. Worse, people may claim that the problems of the individual—their own problems—can be resolved only at that indeterminate future point when the world’s problems are solved. This, argues Lindbergh, addresses the issue in the wrong way.

People will not, she suggests, save themselves by first saving the world and the future. Rather they will save the world and the future by redeeming themselves and the sanctity of the present. The latter can be achieved only after one realizes that the wisdom found in Gift from the Sea “is only a beginning” (144). In keeping with its mission as inspirational literature, the text encourages readers to explore new beaches for themselves. In other words, the author advises taking her experiences and words as signposts to something of one's own, not as destinations. Thus, Gift from the Sea attempts to inspire a true return to the personal as a response to the modern tendency toward abstraction away from the self.