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.

Here I am again! I looked up the word once more, perhaps it had changed, but no. It is a sailing term. The winds just stop; they are “calm and baffling.” That’s my life these days. I am in the doldrums!

I am stuck inside my head, bored and anxious. I don’t know what to do, don’t know how to pray – there is no energy, no wind. TV watching and online shopping try to tell me that they will help the situation, but they don’t. I was thinking about doldrums, and I’m not sure if it’s a spiritual doldrum but I have felt that way for a while. Apparently, I suggested to a friend when she was feeling this way that she could look at the time of a great spiritual connection to be a gift, a spiritual experience maybe not something we can expect all the time or try to seek. I am still somewhat suffering from those spiritual doldrums it’s just like I can’t make that conscious contact. I really miss that, but I’ll just stay open for God’s will for me.

I talked with a friend who sails and found out more about this nautical term. He had experienced the doldrums while sailing to Hawaii. When the winds stopped there was nothing they could do. They just had to wait. 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.

I imagine that they contented themselves with the wait some of the time and at other times were frustrated or bored 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 and their journey stalled.

That’s where I am. Stalled. I would like to think about life as a ‘journey’ but now I see I am really thinking more about a destination. I would like to feel that strong conscious contact all the time. Now what? The doldrums. I cannot force a next step. 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 inside me. I want to be about what’s next, the next destination. But it’s not up to me.

When I was first sober, I was having a difficult time finding a higher power that I could turn my life over to the care of. The only thing that I connected with was the feeling of the wind and that it could care for me and move me to where my higher power wanted me to go. I surrendered to the wind.

It is what it is, so I had to find a way to accept it and live with it until the winds of the next change/growth comes. These doldrums are part of my experience of life and God. Feelings seemed stuck and like they will go on forever. I remember a wise friend reminding me that no feeling lasts forever. If I got hit by a bus whatever I was feeling would only be the last feeling but while alive, all feelings change as does life.

The winds will come—they always do. The weather changes, the days grow longer and then shorter and then longer again. It’s life on life’s terms and I hope that I really embrace that truth more and relax, smile, and read a book. I can go to a meeting and take a walk. I talk with my AA friends and my sponsor while I wait out the doldrums. Perhaps I will remember that the doldrums come at the junction of two great things, two great oceans. I have to wait and surrender to the pause, remembering to keep myself out of god’s way. The wind always returns.

Libbie S.