“If you don’t become the ocean you’ll be seasick every day.” – Leonard Cohen

Quieting Waves

He, Isaiah Cowherd, had been watching his friend from a distance for quite some time. He’d sensed a change in her, but couldn’t put his finger on what that change was. Then, one day he thought he saw her, one gas-pump aisle away.

He felt awkward for sure, so he found himself shifting his gaze. Soon, his fluctuating look became an almost constant stare. So, he reprimanded himself.

“I’m being creepy!” 

That’s when the woman he was staring at waved at him. She had recognized him and he felt relieved, as he walked over to say hello and apologize for staring.

“I wasn’t sure it was you,” he started.

He looked into her eyes earnestly as he spoke, so she’d know he was speaking from his heart. And, that’s when he recognized the difference in her! She had lost her smile.

“You’ve lost your smile,” he said. “Is everything alright?”

A wispy emotion flittered across her face as she replied.

“I’ll be okay,” she said unconvincingly, as if a shallow response would disguise the tsunami surely lurking below that artificially surfaced affirmation.

He knew there was something much bigger, too much to be held, in the small vessel to which she had assigned it. So, over the coming days and weeks he stood as if in a ship’s crow’s nest, on watch. 

A crow's nest is a structure in the upper part of the main mast of a ship, used as a lookout. Its position ensures the widest field of view, for lookouts, to spot approaching hazards. Using this metaphorical approach, Isaiah could continue to watch over his friend from a distance. Then, he watched, pondered and hoped to discover a way to help his friend find personal confidence and happiness again.

As he implemented this oceanic-based strategy, he remembered a particularly poignant line from Leonard Cohen’s poem, “Good Advice From Someone Like Me.” 

“If you don’t become the ocean you’ll be seasick every day.” 

This one line of inspiration, from Leonard Cohen’s artistic prose, allowed him to identify and chart a course he knew would lead him toward effectively helping his friend. 

Isaiah’s personal take on this mind-expanding stanza?

“If you expand and become a large enough container, the little ripples that are so easy to complain about, that affect you, won’t bother you anymore,”

From that point on, he worked to put himself in his friend’s shoes. He did the mental and emotional work to begin to see the world, as if through her eyes. To see his friend’s challenges and absorb them. Later, he would say that this practice turned out to be a “personal exercise of expansion,” increasing the size of his own ocean, until it was large enough to soften the waves decomposing the periphery of a good friend’s self-assurance. 

“Because,” he explained, “If I focus on my troubles alone, I’m living alone. But, if I’m helping with hers, we’re succeeding together.”

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