Science conferences are usually a place of great discovery.
My PhD could have been a shite time in my life but I needed to go through it to have my foundation. It was every horror story you wouldn’t want to know happening every day. It made me fearful of everyone and everything. However, this story is not about the bad times, it is about the moment I realised I was in love with something I feared the most.
I love water, I really loved the pool. But the sea. I was too scared to love. Some years ago I was at a conference in Costa Brava. A special conference on Biomaterials (Gordon Research Conference for you science heads). So we wake up for talks from 8-12, then they have an activity for us to hang from 14-16, then from 17 onwards more talks and science discussions, then dinner. One of the day trips was on a rinky dink boat captained by the forever tanned boys of the sea. Imagine being on a boat with a bunch of PhD students, a few post-docs and sprinkles of professors. There was a Trini girl I immediately started talking to, because...culture. I also had a lot of laughs from the captain and his 'first officer'. It was pretty hilarious, as the captain and I kept making inappropriate jokes about tans. He anchored the boat just a few miles out in the sea just near to where some famous writer (I think it was Truman Capote) spent time contemplating words and feelings. The captain took a look at us and jumped in, watermelon in hand and started feeding the fish. I remember looking out at the Mediterranean and thinking, It's just a large pool, cannon ball in. But I hesitated, I was so scared of everything, the boat sinking, the boat moving ever so slightly that I would slip and hit my head and lose my ability to think. Becuase I do so much over thinking that I wouldn't know what to do if I stopped thinking. As I pondered over and over, my body brought me closer and closer to the edge. Then before I knew it, I took off my cover up and was standing on the side of the boat ready to jump. Then my body grabbed me and threw me off the side before my mind could tell it not to. I slipped a bit but caught myself in time to propel my body into the water. OK, so only one thing sort of happened from my lists of thoughts.
Well, that wasn’t so bad, until a fish swam past my foot and I screamed murder. I could see it was a little fish. The set of thoughts reappeared; are there sharks? no, maybe barracudas, what was that? And then I thought I probably ate his friend the night before, so he is coming for my toe with vengeance. Gosh, it can be tiring writing down the thoughts in my head. So then I took a deep breath and swam back to the boat. But just as I was about to get out I heard a guy say, “I have never seen the sea before.” He was a scientist too. I've lived in Guyana, The United States (New York, Massachusetts, and California), UK, Sweden and Germany and in all of those places I always found a way to the ocean or sea without realising how privileged I was to do that. This guy had never been in or even seen the sea. This was a humbling moment.
“ I will surf and conquer this fear. If I can achieve this, I will have nothing else to fear ever.”
It was in that moment I humbly accepted that I loved the sea. In the fear of the unknown, there was love as I always found a way to it. In my thoughts, I would ramble but my body always found a way through. So I pushed back from the boat and floated and thought, I am grateful and gosh, why do I always love the most difficult of things. Then I encouraged the fellow into the water. What a great experience it was for him. The first time in salt water and it was off of Costa Brava from a wicked sailboat. Since many of the scientists there had never had this experience, I stayed in the whole time. I knew at that moment this was a treat that I shouldn’t take lightly. My PhD was just about to end in the next month with a frightening defence of my thought processes for each experiment and paper published. So what was the point of being scared to swim in this large pool? I stayed, floated a bit, and fed the fish watermelon. That night I had the veggie option for dinner. I mean I will see more fish when I get back in, don’t want to rub them the wrong way. That was also the night my heart started yearning for the sea, the night both mind and body needed to be near the feeling of a great love mixed with a seemingly uncontrollable fear. It was also the night I told myself: It is time I learn to surf. If and only if I can achieve this, I will have nothing else to fear ever.
Biomaterials Gordon Research Conference June 2015
First written August 24th, 2017