Gift From The Sea

“I began these pages for myself, in order to think out my own particular pattern of living, my own individual balance of life, work and human relationships.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh outlines her reasons for writing the book. Since, for her, writing is an aid to thinking, she wrote to reflect on the character and balance of her own life. However, in writing and in speaking to other women, she discovered that these questions and her thoughts on them were relevant to many other women who were seeking a similar spiritual reorientation.

“Even those whose lives had appeared to be ticking imperturbably under their smiling clock-faces were often trying, like me, to evolve another rhythm […]”

On the surface, Gift from the Sea and the questions asked in it do not seem relevant to a certain group of women. These are women who appear to be leading perfectly ordered and contented lives in conventional society. However, beneath the façade of happiness and perfection, many of these women are crying out for a more individual and creative tempo to their lives. As the “smiling clock-faces” image indicates, the mechanical performance of contentment that they feel obliged to put on, and the pressure of doing this, makes them yearn for a change.

“Rollers on the beach, wind in the pines, the slow flapping of herons across sand dunes, drown out the hectic rhythms of city and suburb, time tables and schedules.”

Lindbergh describes some of the natural sights and sounds she experiences on the beach. These not only help her relax but on a deeper level also help her establish a different tempo of living, one that is quieter and more in harmony with nature and her own body. Such a rhythm counters the harsh, mechanical, and remorseless tempo of city and suburban life.

“One never knows what chance treasures these easy unconscious rollers may toss up, on the smooth white sand of the conscious mind.”

After about a week of just relaxing by the beach, Lindbergh says, one’s mind starts to awaken again, and thoughts and ideas start coming to one. However, one should not try to control, judge, or force these thoughts with rational consciousness. Rather, like waiting to see what the tide washed up on the beach, one must be patient and wait to see what the unconscious mind is trying to say.

“The life I have chosen as wife and mother entails a whole caravan of complications.”

Through beach living, Lindbergh starts to grasp the importance of simplicity for inner peace and calm. She talks about dispensing with unnecessary clothes, furniture, and even people, and this starts to bring her a deeper sense of harmony. The problem, though, for Lindbergh is that her life with a family necessarily involves complication and clutter. She has to attend to a husband, five children, and a busy home. As such, the challenge for her is to resolve or ameliorate this contradiction. This is especially critical, as she says that abandoning her family and the conventional world altogether is not an option for her.

“For life today in America is based on the premise of ever-widening circles of contact and communication.”

The position of a housewife has almost always been one of complications and multiple and competing obligations. Yet this is exacerbated, argues Lindbergh, by modern life in general and life in postwar America specifically. Telephones, planes, cars, televisions, and radios all mean that people are becoming increasingly connected to each other. This seems like a good thing, but it means that an already cluttered and busy life becomes even busier and more cluttered. One is able and expected to speak to and see more people. In this context, the quiet space that individuals possess to be alone with themselves shrinks to almost nothing.

“It seems to imply rejection or unpopularity.”

Solitude, argues Lindbergh, is both natural and crucial for developing true inner contentment. Yet human beings typically shrink away from it. One of the reasons for this is that culture has a negative perspective on solitude. People are socialized to believe that being alone is a sign of personal failure and that the successful or valued person is always surrounded by others.

“Parting is inevitably painful, even for a short time.”

Lindbergh discusses another reason why human beings tend to avoid solitude. For those in close relationships, being separated from one’s partner, even for a day or an evening, can be difficult. They can start to miss the other's company and support and worry about what is happening to them. Yet, she says, after the initial pain and fear pass, one begins to feel an awakening of joy and can, in fact, return to one’s partner rejuvenated.

“In housework, as in the rest of life, the curtain of mechanization has come down between the mind and the hand.”

One of the ways people can reestablish a sense of calmness in their lives, argues Lindbergh, is through creative physical activities such as cooking, sewing, or painting. These activities, traditionally, help to still the mind and open up a space for contemplation. However, the automation of household tasks, ostensibly to make life easier, undermines these sources of contemplation. This mechanization, as seen with oven-ready meals or electric sewing machines, detaches the task from the natural rhythms of the body.

“The cell of self-knowledge is the stall in which the pilgrim must be reborn, says St. Catherine of Sienna. Voices from the past. In fact, these are pursuits and virtues of the past.”

Lindbergh notes that past philosophers and saints extolled the virtues of solitude for self-understanding and realization. Such voices of the past can act as antidotes to the present moment, especially to mass media and its denigration and neglect of solitude. Unfortunately, part of this cultural neglect of solitude is also constituted by a neglect and forgetting of past wisdom itself, which might remind one of the value of solitude.

“…the very limitations of her life forced her to look inward.”

Women, suggests Lindbergh, are traditionally more attuned to the inner life than men. This is partly because women, for most of history, were excluded from the “outer” world of the public sphere and work. As such, they had to direct their energies and their desire for exploration inward to their own immediate perceptions and consciousness. However, says Lindbergh, as women entered the workforce and started competing with men, they also began, like men, to look outward and neglected their inner lives.

“It is like the artist’s vision before he has to discipline it into form.” 

Lindbergh uses the analogy of the artist’s vision to explain the nature of the initial, pure, and ecstatic stage of a relationship. As with the artist's idea, such a relationship is beautiful precisely because of its freshness and untarnished potential. However, as with the vision, if the relationship is to persist, it must be tempered by practicalities and reality, which inevitably dilute its initial purity.

“Both men and women feel the change in the early relationship and hunger nostalgically for its original pattern as life goes on and becomes more complicated.”

The end of the “double-sunrise” pure, ecstatic stage of a relationship and its transition to something more practical and sedate is inevitable for a couple. Yet, the memory of the exhilaration of that early stage is also powerful, especially when contrasted with the more humdrum and committed reality of the practical relationship. As such, it is tempting for men and women to try and recreate the initial excitement of the double-sunrise stage by seeking someone new. Such an effort, though, will not only destroy the present relationship but will also lead to disappointment and failure as the new relationship, too, succumbs to practical demands.

“The sunrise shell has the eternal validity of all beautiful and fleeting things”

Lindbergh is clear that people cannot return to the initial purity and excitement of the double-sunrise stage of a relationship, and accepting that fact is essential to maintaining a healthy relationship with one’s partner. However, this fact does not mean that the double-sunrise stage is valueless or illusory. To think this way is to identify value with duration. The double-sunrise is beautiful precisely because it is, like a sunrise, transient.

“We Americans with our terrific emphasis on youth, action, and material success certainly tend to belittle the afternoon of life and even pretend it never comes.”

Lindbergh discusses the period of life after the “oyster bed” stage, when children have grown up and left home, and people enter what is called middle age. They often approach this phase of life with apprehension, in part because of the cultural importance placed on youth and the chance for external accomplishment that accompanies it. However, Lindbergh points out that people should, in fact, approach this stage of life with hope and excitement. Freed from youthful concerns with outer achievement, one can explore the uncharted territories of the inner life.

“It perhaps can only follow a long development in the history of human civilization and individually in each human being’s life.”

The “argonauta” stage of a relationship is one in which, following the disintegration of the “oyster bed” stage, both partners support each other in reciprocal self-realization. However, this is a difficult and rare thing to achieve. Indeed, Lindbergh suggests that it may not yet be fully possible because it requires women to be fully independent, both economically and emotionally.

“America may hunger, in our material, outward, active, masculine culture, for the supposedly feminine qualities of heart, mind and spirit—qualities which are actually neither masculine nor feminine, but simply human qualities that have been neglected.”

The fact that American culture is so obsessed with looking “outward” to practical activity and socially validated signs of success means that it unwittingly encourages a desire for a return to the inner life. Such inner qualities, and concern with spirituality, beauty, and contemplation, are neglected or regarded as part of the “feminine.” However, concern for the inner life, argues Lindbergh, has nothing to do with gender, and both men and women should attempt to reclaim it against the forces and pressures of American culture.

“We work easily and instinctively together, not bumping into each other as we go back and forth about our tasks.”

Lindbergh describes a perfect day spent by the beach, on vacation, with her sister. They worked and relaxed together, developing a natural and harmonious rhythm of life in connection with each other; each was attuned to the other’s needs. Lindbergh describes this day to offer a glimpse of what the ideal argonauta type relationship might look like.

“I couldn’t even walk head up looking out to sea, for fear of missing something precious at my feet.”

When she first started collecting shells on the beach, says Lindbergh, she tried to pick up every interesting shell that she saw. In the process, she missed the beauty of the environment that was around her. This anecdote serves as a metaphor for the importance of patience and discrimination when trying to acquire new wisdom and a new rhythm of life.

“A candle flowers in the space of night.”

Lindbergh use the image of the candle in the night to highlight the centrality of space and limitation to beauty and meaning. Just as a candle’s significance is only truly evident when it is set against darkness, so events, sites, and people in one’s life gain importance precisely because they arise amid a backdrop of quietness, simplicity, and solitude. In contrast, even the most interesting person or exciting event is dulled by the constant stream of stimulation and people encountered in the city.

“We never would have chosen these neighbors; life chose them for us.”

Choice, suggests Lindbergh, can be a bad thing. This is especially the case when it comes to other people. Given the choice of whom to socialize with among a wide range of people, as occurs in the city, people invariably end up choosing others who are similar to themselves and present no challenge. On the other hand, if they are compelled to interact with people they would not have chosen, as happens on a remote island, they are more likely to find the encounters challenging and stimulating.

“We are asked to feel compassionately for everyone in the world.”

One of the problems with the increasing interconnectedness of the world, in which one learns about wars and famines on different continents, is that it stretches the capacity for compassion. People want, Lindbergh says, to help alleviate everyone’s suffering, but then they feel guilty because this is impossible. Worse, she says, worrying about events in far-off places over which one has no influence can distract people from paying attention to the development of the inner self.

“And have we not also been awakened to a new sense of the dignity of the individual because of the threats and temptations to him, in our time […]”

The individual in postwar America, argues Lindbergh, is assailed on all sides. Mass media and the constant noise of entertainment and advertising destroy the space and quiet that are necessary for individuality to develop and encourage everyone to be the same. However, says Lindbergh, it is, ironically, from a growing awareness of these threats that a new focus on the sanctity of the individual may develop.