These were the men of the whaleship Essex, whose story would later inspire parts of “Moby Dick.”
Even in today's world, their situation would be really dire, but think about how much worse it would have been then.
No one on land had any idea that anything had gone wrong. No search party was coming to look for these men. So most of us have never experienced a situation as frightening as the one in which these sailors found themselves, but we all know what it's like to be afraid.
We know how fear feels, but I'm not sure we spend enough time thinking about what our fears mean.
As we grow up, we're often encouraged to think of fear as a weakness, just another childish thing to discard like baby teeth or roller skates.
And I think it's no accident that we think this way. Neuroscientists have actually shown that human beings are hard'wired to be optimists.
So maybe that's why we think of fear, sometimes, as a danger in and of itself. “Don't worry,” we like to say to one another. “Don't panic.” In English, fear is something we conquer. It's something we fight.
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