Gift From the Sea |
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6 December 2023
Anne Lindbergh is not an author I had heard of until Ryan Holiday recommended her Gift From the Sea. It was written the same year my mother was born, when Lindbergh was reaching her middle years and reflecting on life. Like Feynman, her starting point is a beach. I have realized this is a very American perspective, at least for an east coaster like me. I learned a lot of physics there as a child playing in the waves and building with the sand. I also learned a lot of biology exploring the creatures and their remains that washed up on the shore with my mother, who seemed to know about every one (she did study marine biology in college). Lindbergh uses the shells as starting points for philosophical discussion. For example, the oyster: it's not pretty but functional, like she felt then as it was the middle years of her life. Somehow I do not feel like I'm in the middle years of my life, even though at 44 years I'm the age of the average European. But I suppose, like Lindbergh, I clock my age by my children, who are now all adults. I would have had more and still be in the thick of parenting, but sadly it was not to be. Lindbergh lost her first child to a kidnapper who then murdered it, a pain I cannot imagine but which she does not mention in this book. And while she addresses her readers as women, I felt the wisdom imparted applied more generally. Connections are important, but distant connections hard to maintain. Technology can be a time saver, but opens up new ways to waste it. We cannot fit anymore into the shells of previous parts of our lives.
