What Combat Diving Can Teach Us About Mindfulness
The importance of one moment in time and how we control it
This was one of my earliest essays on What then?
I made the second half a “classical diatribe,” the rhetorical style that one of my favorite philosophers, Epictetus, used to devastating effect. It was a joy to write.
Since I had almost zero subscribers when I published this last, I thought it would be a good essay to resurrect, as my essays have changed quite a bit since then.
Two combat divers slip into the cold waters of a black night wearing black wetsuits, black fins, black masks, and black Draeger rebreathers that do not release bubbles.
Once beneath the water, the pair vigorously shake themselves and their gear, opening their wetsuits to the cold water and pinching open the edge of their neoprene hoodies to let the water sting their scalp. They suppress their groans.
The Frogmen use this underwater ritual to remove bubbles—those tiny pockets of air that mean death.
The teams task is to plant a limpet mine on the hull of an enemy ship. Upon rising from the depths near the enemy craft, air expands; if it were to seep out of the arm of a wetsuit or a crevice of the rebreather, the bubble would rise to the surface. One alert sentry and two or three grenades later, the Frogmen are dead and the mission is failed.
The dive pair fin their way fifteen feet beneath the surface of the water. In the icy blackness of the bay, the driver has nothing but a dive board: a piece of plastic with a compass and watch and depth gauge fastened to it. Eyes fixed meditatively on the compass, the driver leads the pair as they fin a pre-established dive plan.
On the last leg, the water begins to brighten and the blackness becomes less dense as they near the ship with its flood lights and crew at work. The water around them grows brighter and brighter, and a tiny voice in the back of their minds erupts and the divers worry that they will look like manatees from the deck of the ship.
Suddenly the water becomes black, blacker than it was in the middle of the port, as if the dive pair swapped the black sea for the blackness of outer space and were nearing the edge of the event horizon of some endless and depthless black hole. The icy water somehow becomes even colder. The Frogmen are nearing the hull of the ship and the darkness that lies beneath it as moon and pier and flood lights are blocked, as if all light on earth had just been extinguished and the universe is collapsing upon itself and all that is left is the Void and a swim pair and the voices inside of their skulls.
The non-driving Frogman calmly switches the little voice off, swims above his buddy, and sticks his hand out towards the black hole in order to protect the driver’s head from colliding with the invisible ship’s hull.
Once beneath the ship, the pair silently fin towards the stern to conduct the most dangerous part of the dive. The driver must now rise to within a few thin inches of the surface, just beyond the concealment of the ship’s hull, in order to read the ships name painted across its rear to make sure the mine doesn’t destroy the wrong ship.
One diver begins the… ever… so… slow… rise to the surface, allowing the buoyancy of the O2 bag on his abdomen to gently lift him up inch by inch, and the moment finally arrives: he feels the air in his mask begin to expand.
All of his training, every hour and year and decade of overriding his desires and aversions, of placing the mission above himself, and of mastering his inner discourse amidst the cacophony of protests and woe-is-me and wrath and self-pity and terror and self-interest and “what if’s” and excuses – all of it was designed for this one moment.
He calmly takes hold of it.
He quiets his mind, begins his ascent, inhales the slightest amount through his nose, and draws down the air in his mask.
The Frogman can see the ships name wavering like a mirage through the six inches of water that separates his eyes from the air above—and not a single millimeter wide bubble works its way around the edge of his mask.
He slowly descends back into the blackness.
What then?
Combat diving is brutally miserable. The seaweed and stingrays and sharks and cold and rotating propeller blades and, above all, the voices within one’s own mind, make combat diving a test. Nothing exists in that blackness but two things: the dive board in your hands and the voices in your head.
Yet it is, perhaps, one of the most momentous feelings of self-command to be mindful of those minuscule pockets of air as you gently rise those few feet to the surface with a pistol at the ready.
But what does the Un-frogman say?
“It is normal to feel fear, and this might make me miss a bubble or two. Are we not supposed to be more aware of our emotions? And talk through them? And not bury them?” Then let us talk it out. What is it you are afraid of? Your heart is not pushing 160 beats per minute because you are afraid of failure; no, your heart does not do this in training. Is it being captured you are afraid of? No, because you know there is no quarter—you either complete the task at hand which lands you either life or death, or you fail the task, which guarantees you death.
So it is death, then, that you are afraid of.
There is a certain irony here: your fear of death becomes the means by which you die. Said another way, your inability to control the thoughts within your own head is what kills you. Neither the grenade, nor the sailor who lobs it into the deeps, nor even the officer who orders him to lob it, is the cause of your death. You and you alone are to blame for your early departure from this life. But not just your departure—your brother as well as he floats beside you, eyes wide behind his mask, patiently waiting for your move. He too will die. And how many more besides, now that this warship can wreak havoc across the seas? How many more due to your ungoverned mind?
What then are we asking of the Frogman? That he master that ancient muscle within his skull.
“My heart is slamming and I have no idea what is happening above me. I cannot be perfect.” Perfection is not within your control, but you can see this thought within your skull, which means you can either blindly obey it or put a bullet in it and mind your bubbles.
This is within your control.
“I am breathing so hard that I might run out of O2 and need to surface.” But again, you can see this thought within your skull, which means you can either blindly obey it or put a bullet in it and mind your bubbles.
This too is within your control.
“But it is just a handful of bubbles. What are the odds anyone even sees them?” Do you teach your child to look left and right and left before walking across the street? Of course you do. Even when there are no cars? Of course. Why? Why else than because you know you should teach her to prepare for the worst thing that can happen? If you give a damn about your child, would you leave it up to Charon to decide whether to bear her soul across the Styx? No? Then why leave it up to the Ferryman of the dead if your bubbles are seen?
“You are expecting me to be a machine.” Let us put this to the test. What does a machine value? Nothing, because it is a machine. It is inanimate. It cares for no one, loves no one, fights for no one. Why then would this machine be freezing its ass off fifteen feet beneath some other irrelevant slab of metal half a world away for a mission it cares nothing about? And why would it be willing to die (if only it could die) for apes of flesh and blood it feels nothing for? It would not.
And we would not send a machine to do this mission because if this unthinking hunk of metal were to uncaringly plant the mine on the wrong ship, many innocent apes would die. But what are you? A Homo sapiens, a wise ape, a wise human, and this is precisely who we send for these missions—because they care.
And besides, is this really so bad? The slimy, savage, seaweed thick bay water you’re scissor kicking your way through has some primal beauty to it in the way it reminds you of the primordial soup we all originated from; would you not rather know what this is like than not know? Would you not rather know what it is to inch right up to the edge of the spectrum of human experience, the other side of which—just within your reach—lies the Void?
What machine would get off on this? What machine except for the one that has veins with blood and brains with neurons, that wise ape, that ancient primate that wants a good fight and to contribute to others and to contemplate itself?
Can you not be grateful for the refractions of the moonlight on the water above you and the pools of bioluminescence that glow bluish-green as you glide through them? Can you not feel grateful for the cold, for the one Master Voice in your skull serenely silencing the many Lesser Voices, for the bump of some sea creature (tortoise? dolphin? shark?) slamming into your ribs out of the blackness—that all of this makes you feel more alive and more aware and more calm than at any other point in your entire life?
What is so terrible about all of this? Yes it is a matter of life and death, but it is a thing of awe that life and death is dictated by a mere capsule of air.
Why then would we not be more aware of our bubbles? Why allow some useless thought to blind us to the things that actually matter in our short time here?
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This was a tense read! Well written. I agree, we are responsible for our actions and the consequences.
It is interesting that we, humans invent these missions and others, humans volunteer for these and many other, some not as intense, missions. There is incredible satisfaction in missions accomplished. I’m sure there are many other drivers besides satisfaction; to each his own.