Man-O-War Anxiety

Portuguese man-o-war got their name because someone imagined that they look like an 18th century Portuguese battleship under full sail. I am not sure of the conditions that bring them to the shore, but they show up pretty often on the beaches here in Southeastern Florida. When that happens, a purple flag of warning hangs from the lifeguard stand on affected beaches. You can still swim, if you choose, but your choice may involve getting stung by the tentacles that stretch out up to 30 feet from the floating creature itself. This makes swimming feel especially fraught to me. 

The chance of seeing a man-o-war while you are in the water is slight enough, with all of the wave action and given the fact that your eyes are close to sea level themselves, but knowing that their sticky tentacles are so far reaching pushes the risk factor up exponentially. Suffice it to say that I don't usually swim when the purple flag flies. I do, however, walk the shoreline, careful to avoid the bloated blueish bodies littering my path. 

One day when the purple flag flew, Gary was walking, presumably without my hyper-attentiveness and he stepped on one. A loud POP! startled him out of his reverie. If it were me, I would have rushed to the water to rinse off my foot and then nervously looked for signs of the stinging venom they are known to possess. When I asked him what happened afterward, he laughed and said, "nothing." 

"What?" I asked, "didn't it sting? Wasn't there some kind of jelly stuck to your foot?"

"Nope. Turns out it was full of air. It just popped. Made me jump a little from the sound, but it didn't hurt in any way. No sting, no nothing." He laughed at himself, recalling again how he had reacted to the loud sound of it popping under his foot.

I laughed with him a little, but honestly found it hard to believe that Gary's encounter was that innocuous, after all of the built up anxiety that surrounded the creatures for me. I started thinking about the unsettling fact that often the things I worry about, just like those man-o-war lying on the shore, are no more than so much hot air. How often does all of the anxiety and worry built up around something I fear turn out to be a bloated, benign balloon of absolutely nothing?

Doing some research, I discovered that the tentacles of beached man-o-war can and do sting, so beach combers are cautioned to avoid stepping on or near them for this reason. So, I can comfort myself, if I feel the need to justify myself, with the thought that my fear of them is appropriate after all. But, like the choice I often make to walk in the shallow waves even when the purple flag flies, I can also choose not to let my fear ramp up into anxiety that takes away the casual joy of walking on a sandy beach in Florida. I can choose to focus on the joy, and maybe even appreciate the beauty of those blueish to pink man-o-war dotted among the shells and seaweed.