What If We Set Our Truths Adrift?

Recently, I wrote a nonsense humor piece about a message-in-a-bottle conference. The conference was given by bottles and attended by bottles — silly stuff.

As with much of writing, I did an internet search to see how much I didn’t know about messages in bottles — MIBs. I read about their history, stories, and purpose over the centuries.

MIBs are messages sent in the direst of circumstances. They are love letters. They are jokes. They are set off by oceanographers to GPS-monitor currents and that which they transport. These are all MIBs in that they carry information in their own time from Point A to an undetermined Point B.

The thought of doomed individuals sending floating messages in the hope they’d be found and taken to loved ones afar is heartbreaking. It’s a confluence of mystery, as slow-moving messages morphed into unintended puzzles for those on a faraway beach.

I ordered a book about MIBs — Messages from the Sea, compiled by Paul Brown. It focuses on messages found during the Victorian era on shores around the world. MIBs back then, launched with desperate hope to report on a calamitous event at sea, held their own spot in history. Radio waves were eventually harnessed, and sea-faring communications improved by orders of magnitude. Instead of perhaps taking decades to deliver a message, the new technology took minutes.

As you start to read these old messages found nearly two hundred years ago in washed-up bottles and tin containers, you begin to imagine what it all must have been like — being on a listing sea vessel and knowing your minutes were numbered.

What could it have been like to face an anonymous death? Where your only shred of hope was a floating bottle.

I admire the urgent, assertive, and nearly futile act of trying to communicate against all odds. When chances were so low, folks tried anyway to tell others what they wanted to say.

It makes me ponder why we fail to communicate when, on sure footing in the unthreatened day-to-day, there is every hope of our message reaching its intended destination. Sometimes we fail to send the message. Sometimes we send a less-than-stellar message when we do.

Why should desperation on a foundering ship be the one surefire way to get me to send out such important information? My truths are no different standing here on the ground than they would be on a sinking ship.

Life is never always easy. Setting the truth free can be thwarted by not getting around to it, a lack of urgency to do it, fear of doing it, or assuming the timing must be perfect. There is no perfect, but there is missing the boat. Some of the messages in that book surely point to having missed the boat earlier in life, despite the oxymoron of that.

We want to hide from feelings and fears. We never quite explain ourselves to the world, especially when doing so would require self-awareness we don’t have. We keep secrets hidden in shame, guilt, or regret. We stray from asking for what we need. It’s all so human.

What I’ve learned over time is how our humanness is a series of contradictions. We want someone to know how much we love them, but we fear the potential rejection of letting that message fly free. We want to be absolved of our errors, but we battle with ourselves to work towards that, as the cost seems to outweigh the benefit. We have important information to convey to others, like appreciation and gratitude for them, but there’s never the right time to transfer that message. It’s so easy to forget. Time is slippery.

What I see so clearly after reading this short book is that I don’t want to wait until I’m tilting in the middle of the ocean of time toward the end. I want to be braver and say what I need to in diplomatic terms, with kindness and truth. I want to get off my rear end and start telling those I love and appreciate how much their presence in the world meant to someone else — me.

Why wouldn’t I? One day I might not have access to a bottle or there might not be paper. Today I have all the bottles, pens, and paper in the world — maybe even some time — though who knows. I’m not in charge of that. I’m only in charge of getting my message out.