In days of old, sailors feared the doldrums, also known as the calms, and officially known as the Intertropical Convergence Zone. Due to a complex meteorological effect in this area, ships in the age of sail often were stranded for weeks, imperiling the lives of the sailors and passengers. As Samuel Taylor Coleridge put it in his famous poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”:

Day after day, day after day,

We stuck, nor breath nor motion;

As idle as a painted ship

Upon a painted ocean.

This is not the only meaning of the word, however; The Merriam-Webster online dictionary also defines doldrums as: “a spell of listlessness or despondency” and “a state or period of inactivity, stagnation, or slump.”

I feel empty, isolated, lonely, rudderless, without focus and without direction. To explain why and to put it into a nomadic context I must turn once again to the incomparable poem “The Song of the Open Road” by Walt Whitman:

Allons! We must not stop here,

However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here,

However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here,

However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while.

Whitman was referring to the periods of respite that perennial nomads take when they come in off the road for brief periods of time. It is intolerable for them to linger long; they must be away again on the next adventure. If we look at the nomadic lifestyle in a metaphorical sense, these periods of respite can refer to any interludes in your life’s journey when you are between active phases. For a traveler, it can refer, of course, to hiatuses between one peregrination and another. When I was young and on the road fulltime this would sometimes occur if I had run out of funds and had to pause and take a temporary job or I had reached a particular goal and needed to set my sights on a new direction. The journeys we take are not always physical meanderings, though. A career can be a journey, as can marriage, and parenthood, and numerous other undertakings. And these journeys can abruptly come to an end. For instance, you might quit your job or get fired; your spouse might die or you might get divorced; your kids eventually grow up and move out. Your life’s continuity becomes disrupted and you go through a reset. But eventually you have to pick yourself up and move on. Here’s Whitman again:

All parts away for the progress of souls,

All religion, all solid things, arts, governments – all that was or is apparent on this globe or any globe, falls into niches and corners before the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe.

Moving on: that’s the key. If you need to rest, fine; but eventually you must rejoin that “procession of souls.” You can’t sit still forever. And Whitman enjoins us:

Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman, come forth!

You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though you built it, or though it has been built for you.

Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen!

It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it.

These musings were brought on because of a milestone I reached in a particularly rough journey I have been on: my cancer journey. In recent months this has been my primary focus, with exams, procedures, surgery, and several weeks of daily radiation therapy, which has just ended. I supposed that after it was all over I would be ebullient and feel like celebrating. Instead, when I got home after the final radiation session I felt empty, isolated, and lonely. Cast adrift.

For the past several months my cancer diagnoses had been dominating my existence and my schedule. There had been one appointment after another, and some of them had been profoundly unpleasant. But here’s the thing: at least I had been out there interacting with sympathetic people on a regular basis: doctors, nurses, clinicians, receptionists, and my siblings who had been driving me to appointments. It was eventful, and sometimes even exciting. Now that it was all over, what next? During a cancer journey you are not visiting faraway lands, but you are on an adventure nonetheless, an adventure that takes courage and resolve and the ability to keep your eyes on the goal – the goal of regaining your health. During the course of it I had been all-in; to contain my thoughts and impressions and ideas and emotions I’d even written a book-length journal. Now what? When I got home I felt depressed, as if on a sailing ship I’d entered the doldrums and had lost all momentum.

I’ll get it back, I know, and I will reenter that procession of souls that Walt Whitman writes about. The journey is far from over. Past experience has shown me that another journey, another adventure is in the offing – always.

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