The Log from the Sea of Cortez

by John Steinbeck

Next to marriage settlement or sentence of death, a ship’s charter is as portentous a document as has ever been written.

So far the murder trait of our species is as regular and observable as our various sexual habits.

Association with the sea does not breed contempt.

For it is through struggle and sorrow that people are able to participate in one another—the heartlessness of the healthy, well-fed, and unsorrowful person has in it an infinite smugness.

When a hypothesis is deeply accepted it becomes a growth which only a kind of surgery can amputate. Thus, beliefs persist long after their factual bases have been removed, and practices based on beliefs are often carried on even when the beliefs which stimulated them have been forgotten.

The use of euphemism in national advertising is giving the hangover a bad name. “Over-indulgence” it is called. There is a curious nastiness about over-indulgence. We would not consider overindulging. The name is unpleasant, and the word “over” indicates that one shouldn’t have done it. Our celebration had no such implication. We did not drink too much. We drank just enough, and we refuse to profane a good little time of mild inebriety with that slurring phrase “over-indulgence.”

“We must remember three things,” he said to them. “I will tell them to you in the order of their importance. Number one and first in importance, we must have as much fun as we can with what we have. Number two, we must eat as well as we can, because if we don’t we won’t have the health and strength to have as much fun as we might. And number three and third and last in importance, we must keep the house reasonably in order, wash the dishes, and such things. But we will not let the last interfere with the other two.”

It is so easy to give, so exquisitely rewarding. Receiving, on the other hand, if it be well done, requires a fine balance of self-knowledge and kindness. It requires humility and tact and great understanding of relationships. In receiving you cannot appear, even to yourself, better or stronger or wiser than the giver, although you must be wiser to do it well. It requires a self-esteem to receive—not self-love but just a pleasant acquaintance and liking for oneself.