In many ways, preparing to live and
work on a ship is much like moving onto a college campus. I will be away from home for months at a
time. I eat all my meals for free in a
cafeteria (or the mess, as they are called on boats). I will sleep not far away from the day’s
toil. My world will be a finite space
with a manageable cast of characters. I
will roam the same passageways and constantly recognize familiar faces. Ship-life is life reduced in scale.
“The ship doesn’t change who you
are,” the company trainer told the class, “Whatever you would do at home, you do
on the ship.”
We were warned that the social life
onboard the cruise vessel is reminiscent of high school days. Gossip sneaks around, so do STDs. My training class was advised to be skeptical
of coworkers showing us too much attention upfront. Recent hires are classified as fresh
meat. Clearly, there’s something
everybody inevitably wants, and that’s why the ship gives out free
condoms.
During my training course, I’ve
noticed a giddy energy emanating between my coworkers. There are fifty of us divided into two
classes. And those two classes are
divided further into subgroups. We have
all analyzed the entire cast by now, and so we surround ourselves with the
company we prefer most.
The facility is very isolated from
entertaining distractions, and the weather has been cold enough to trap us
inside. When life is forced inward, it
is easy to see how people get restless, especially if they’re incapable of
entertaining themselves. This is when
the trouble, or the fun, begins.
When I decide how to entertain myself,
I give myself options. If I am hungry
for a cheeseburger, I will research several restaurants before selecting one
that will appease my appetite. In a big
city, there may be a Five Guys, a Red Robin, a Burgatory, and a plethora of
local joints. Back home, I usually have
more than enough options to ensure my satisfaction. But when my environment is significantly reduced
in size, my options become more limited.
When my area shrinks, my tastes and/or expectations could change
accordingly.
In my training class, there are
roughly twenty-five women, many of whom I find pretty, but I haven’t found a
woman of irresistible beauty. The women,
too, may feel this way about the men. As
we spend more time together in isolation with very little to do, there is no
question of what will happen. I have
very few options. I could choose not to
act. Or I could bump up those pretty
girls to the status of irresistible beauty.
“When I first arrived, I didn’t
find any of the women here extremely attractive,” I said to a male friend at
the facility, “But now that a few days have gone by, I’m starting to notice people
I didn’t really pay much attention to before.”
What makes a person attractive is a
relative quality. Beauty is measured by
comparison. Early in life we sift
through what we like and what we don’t like.
I only know what I’ve been exposed to.
Some people think Pittsburgh is a big city because they’ve never seen
New York. In a similar way, one may
believe one person is attractive because they haven’t seen what else is out there.
When I am at home, my market seems
unlimited, and the chances of finding an ideal partner or an ideal friend are
promising because my environment houses an ample population. But what do humans do when their choices are
restricted? I believe that we take the best
of what’s around and make it work. If
the people in my training class were all the people I knew in the world, I would
not refrain from romance because the women didn’t meet my standards. Instead, I would lower my standards and
rewrite my definition of beauty.
Living with small, isolated populations
helps me realize that this scenario is a microcosm of everyday life. My hometown may be much larger and much more
populated than a training facility or a cruise ship. However even in a big city, I will only
encounter a mere fraction of the human race, so I am still limited by the
options presented to me. We continue to
keep what we like and disregard what we dislike, but these preferences are not
entirely of our design. The environment
always plays a part in shaping us. We
choose to accept or reject what it has to offer. When the environment doesn’t have much on the
menu, we don’t get picky.
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