Be Still, My Stingray
How wild things calm Craig Foster
To hear the related 5-minute audio file that I uploaded today as my Morning Journal flash briefing for Alexa devices, please click on the play button:
When the Student is Ready, the Octopus Appears
Do you remember the 2020 documentary about a man who made friends with an octopus?
The movie was My Octopus Teacher. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The man in the story was Craig Foster, a filmmaker from South Africa.
My sister Stephanie last week reminded me of how much I loved the movie. She urged me to watch an interview Foster did on a tour last year for his book, Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World―A Memoir of Nature's Healing Power.
What blew me away in the interview was Foster’s description of when a giant stingray settled on top of him underwater. Here is an excerpt, lightly edited for clarity:
It turned and came towards me. I just kept dead still. The best thing is to just keep still and there's absolutely no aggression and just calm everything down. You just relax every muscle in your body, calm the heartbeat down. And this enormous animal covered my body.
And then I could feel the massive weight pressing me into the seabed. And the skin is beautifully smooth and in that time, it's so powerful that you just completely relax.
And there's almost an ecstatic feeling, and you just feel that enormous animal. It weighs almost a ton. So, you know, you're not moving, but it's not putting all its weight on. So it's an extraordinary feeling.
You don't feel like breathing. You're just enjoying that incredible moment. And, you know, that animal is not going to harm you in any way. That tail can move anywhere. It's like a giant scorpion. So you just keep still. You certainly don't struggle to relax.
And then, of course, it just slowly moves off and you just watch it go away and up to the surface. And it's just, you know, these are these moments of grace that are so special. And that stays with you forever.
I listened to Foster’s melodious voice, calm like a monk’s chanting, as he spoke. His words “still” and “grace” reminded me of what it feels like when I meditate on my cushion.
The memoir recommends “rewilding,” his term for reconnecting with our innate wildness in order to rejuvenate our lives.
Odd, isn’t it, that settling beneath a “wild” creature, in this case a giant sting ray that could have killed him, brought Foster such ecstatic calm. Who tamed whom?
The most poignant scenes in My Octopus Teacher were those in which the octopus settled on Foster’s chest. Again, a moment of calm connectedness to our wild roots.
I have been reviewing 2024 in preparation for tomorrow’s online Annual Review workshop with Tiago Forte. I realized that some of the sweetest moments of last year involved Sophie, our five-pound dog, a Mi-ki.
She usually sits on my lap while Darlene and I are having coffee here or in Maine. Sometimes Sophie sleeps beside me in an upholstered wicker chair while I’m reading my Kindle.
I haven’t thought much about those connections with a non-human creature. That’s what my species and dogs have done for tens of thousands of years.
But listening to Craig Foster invites me anew—to go outside and breathe deeply, to learn from Sophie about being truly present, and to finish reading, slowly, his luminous memoir, Amphibious Soul.
Highly recommended.