Definition: A belt of calm and light baffling winds north of the equator between the northern and southern trade winds in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
I found out recently where the word doldrums comes from. It is a sailing term. The winds just stop, they are “calm and baffling” I am in the doldrums!
It started a week or so ago. Just as I was leaving with my sister to go to Key West it hit. No energy, no wind. I talked with a friend who has a brother who sails and found out more about this nautical term. He and his wife had experienced the doldrums while sailing to Hawaii.
When the winds stopped there was nothing they could do. They just had to wait. Then they noticed that the sea became smooth as a quiet lake and oil from other ships began to collect since there was no wind to move the water. Ocean junk appeared as well. Debris and stuff that normally would move on by or be turned under by waves appeared against the boat. The doldrums happen at a junction: between the Northern and Southern Hemisphere - at a turning point. They were powerless to make the wind come. They had to wait.
I imagine that they contented themselves with the wait some of the time and at other times were frustrated by it. I know it went on for days. Reading books and doing maintenance tasks occupied them but they really wanted to be sailing – sailing to Hawaii. The destination was interrupted, the journey stalled.
That’s where I am today. Stalled. It was so clear to me when I left Seattle: drive the country, go to Bisbee, AZ., attend my reunion, a driving trip with my daughter and then going all the way to Key West, FL – the end of the continental US. I was thinking ‘journey’ but now I see I was more about ‘destination’.
Now what? The doldrums. I cannot force a next step in this adventure. I have gone as far as my driving headlights could see on a dark night. I want to find a big motor and MAKE the wind come. I don’t want to do maintenance or look at my junk that comes up in me as I sit. I want to be about what’s next, the next destination.
And yet this is what is and so I must find a way to accept it and live with it until the winds of the next change come. This doldrums is part of the experience. I need to embrace the journey.
The winds will come – they always do. The weather changes, the days grow longer and then shorter and then longer again. It’s life and I hope that on this adventure I really embrace that truth more and relax, smile, read a book or take a walk ,or send an email while I wait out the doldrums. If I can remember the natical term perhaps I will remember that the doldrums happen at the turning point between two great things. I just have to wait.
