Chasing Whales

Written by Jack Lafferty
A reflection on guiding teenagers in the wilderness.

We grew up poor. We grew up living next to criminals and above drug dealers. Our neighborhood had organized fights and backyard fires that burned higher than apartment buildings (even before we threw in those extra aerosol cans for the ultimate crowd pleasing booms). We were wild. We were uninhibited and under-supervised. We stole, we smashed windows, we turned pristine bowling greens into hideous construction sites. Our actions were obliviously inconsequential. We drank too young, kissed too freely, and partied too hard. In our wake was an ocean of regretful debris, a universally damaging pollution that we moved too fast to even notice.

Now we are in a speedboat, ripping through the Atlantic and leaving the Azorean coastline ever farther out of sight as we chase a circumspect Sperm whale. 

The teenagers I am surrounded by are no longer my peers, they are no longer my fellow Non Educated Delinquents but instead a group of affluent Americans who have, over the past three weeks, become like family. They see me as someone to look up to instead of look down on. My regrets, my pain, my trauma, my fears, every shameful aspect of my past have somehow become a foundation of respect and love. They see my outer and inner damage as distinctly as the scars we have used to identify this secretive cetacean as a foreigner to these waters, never seen before. We are hurtling toward this majestic animal simply to be in his presence for a fleeting moment, to feel our hearts pound with excitement over such a rare and indescribable encounter. In the blink of an eye though, the timid creature flips us off with his enormous tail and disappears, having shown us a mere fraction of who he was. We are left to dream of what life he led, and what life he has yet to live. 

At times I feel as resistant as that Sperm Whale to let people close enough to truly see me. I can run and hide and cloak myself with enough disguise to say, “I’m perfectly fine, no need to look at me. Have a nice day.” I can present to the world a sliver of myself and pretend that nobody knows I’m flipping them off and disappearing as if the 10% they saw was the whole of me. I can dive into the endless ocean of life and swim far from the discomfort of being seen, it’s easy. 

But for the past three weeks, for this group of mouldable inquisitive humans, and my endlessly selfless compassionate co-leader, I have been all of me. I have chosen to embrace the vulnerability of trusting that with the transparency of honesty I will get to know the depth of beauty that comprises those around me by allowing them to know the same in me. I have invited them to see me in order to see them. I have said, here is the damaged darkness that forged me and here is the hopeful light that inspires me. And though I am a foreigner in these waters, I have found family far from home. I have found purpose and fulfillment with intentional presence. I have allowed my hopes and dreams to lift me to the surface of the water, and I have found those looking for me even though it meant exposing my scars.