The Boy Who Argued With the Sea

There was a boy of eleven who, one summer, developed the habit of arguing with the sea. He had reasons. His family had moved to the coast for the summer, and his father, who was going through a rough patch, had told him more than once, in the loose way tired adults say things, that 'the sea would sort him out'. The boy did not want to be sorted out by the sea. He was, he felt, doing perfectly well as he was. So he went down to the beach every morning and, in a low but firm voice, argued with it.

He argued about his bedtime. He argued about his sister. He argued about the unfairness of a particular teacher he was not looking forward to seeing in September. He argued, over the course of six weeks, about most of the injustices he had accumulated in eleven years of life. The sea, as seas do, listened and rolled and gave no indication of having heard any of it.

Toward the end of the summer he began, without meaning to, to argue less. He would go down to the beach, open his mouth to complain, and find that the specific grievance he had come with had somehow lost its edges on the walk. He was not, he realised, being sorted out. He was doing the sorting himself. The sea was simply, by being so obviously indifferent to his opinions, giving him nowhere for the opinions to stick. They fell off him and were pulled out on the tide.

By the end of August he was mostly quiet. He would sit on the wet sand with his legs crossed and watch the horizon. His father, who had begun to look less tired, joined him on some of these mornings, and the two of them would sit together for long stretches without speaking. It was, in later life, the summer the boy remembered most clearly, though very little in the ordinary sense had happened.

As an adult he came to think of the sea as a category. Some things in life will negotiate with you: your friends, your colleagues, your bank, your body up to a point. Others will not: the weather, the past, death, the opinions of strangers, the pace at which grief moves. He had spent, as an eleven-year-old, six weeks trying to argue with something in the second category, and had discovered — because the sea would not fight back — that the argument had never really been with the sea in the first place.

The lesson is a small, useful one to teach yourself early. Notice which of the things annoying you today is negotiable and which is a sea. Take the negotiable ones seriously; write the email, have the conversation, adjust the plan. With the sea, do not argue. Sit beside it. Let the specific grievances lose their edges on the walk. You will find, if you sit long enough, that the important things sort themselves out — not because the sea has done anything, but because you have, in its patient company, at last stopped shouting.