Perception Vs. Reality

“NIHIL NISI IN MENTE”

That was my high school motto… “Nothing Exists Except in the Mind”.

I use that a lot. Especially when I instruct police recruits. But I also have to remind them that even if we choose to ignore something or someone, it doesn’t mean that the actions of the (in our minds) non-existent “thing” aren’t real. I tell the recruits that they can stand in the middle of Route 93 (north or south) and tell themselves that the 18-wheeler bearing down on them doesn’t exist but in a few moments, the reality is they WILL become a hood ornament.

In every class (and I’ve been instructing recruits for about 35 years) such a suggestion gets me a few strange looks. However, I had to graduate high school and enter the real world before I understood the motto’s true meaning (or at least my interpretation).

We are constantly barraged by information of all sorts. Some is so outlandish that we can discard it even before we finish reading the email, tweet, Facebook, or whatever. Some is camouflaged well enough that it takes real thought to interpret the message. And some is frighteningly real. The understanding and credence we ascribe to these is up to us.

In order to interpret such messages, we have to apply our experience, training, education and whatever else we have in our quivers. And that reminds me of another shaggy dog story.

You may find this difficult to believe, but one of my Master’s degrees is in Civil Engineering from Tufts University. At the time, Public Health was a discipline of Civil Engineering. However, as I have told our Municipal Services Director, do not ask me to design a sewage treatment plant. Even though I had some engineering courses, I was there for Public Health studies.

At the time, I was an avid SCUBA diver. In fact, I was making some extra money as a certified Open Water SCUBA Instructor. A fellow diver and roommate at the time was in the same engineering program.

In those days, the paper industry funded a research and development arm known as the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement (NCASI). The purpose for this was to monitor the paper making industry in the US and conduct ongoing research into the process. The industry sponsored a number of laboratories in Civil Engineering departments at different colleges throughout the US. The deal for the schools included funding for students and adjunct instructors (the professional engineers that worked for NCASI). In turn NCASI received lab space.

In case you’re not familiar, paper making required a great deal of water and was, by design, a messy and smelly process. The mosquitos that grew in the bowels of paper mills were the size of sparrows. I know, I met many of them. (Take that Murder Hornets!).

Conservation efforts were taking root in the 1970s (there I go again, talking about eons ago). The paper industry was blamed for polluting the water supplies it used in the manufacturing process. There was, at the time, a paper mill at the southern end of Lake Champlain very close to Fort Ticonderoga. The State of Vermont was suing the State of New York for allowing the lake to become polluted.

Of course, the paper industry disagreed. It seems that, at the time, one of the states (I can’t remember which) used its state police to collect water samples and the analyses of these indicated pollution was occurring.

That’s when my roommate and I entered the picture. The engineers we worked for at NCASI knew we were divers and the industry had decided to replicate the Vermont/New York research. As a result, we were hired for two summers to travel around the country conducting the requisite research. We were paid $5.00/hour for a 40-hour work week (no OT). However, the cherry on top was all new, top-of-the-line SCUBA equipment we could keep upon completion.

Our job was to fly (commercially with all our gear, including SCUBA tanks with some air in them) to various paper mills east of the Mississippi and collect water samples. We spent the first summer designing and building the collection devices at the Mechanical Engineering facilities at Tufts (where John H. Sununu was an Associate Professor from 1966-1982). After those tasks were completed, we flew to such places as Lake Michigan, Lake Champlain, and the Wheeler Reservoir (Alabama). We initially trained in Lake Sunset in Hampstead.

Each site has its own strange story, but I’ll only bore you with Lake Champlain. At each location we hired guides and boats. There was no such thing as GPS, so we hired surveyors to work from shore triangulating the locations at which we planted our collection devices.  

While the experience was incredible, I took with me words of wisdom from my dad… “Remember son, when you do something you love for money it becomes real work.” Was he ever right (of course the older I got, the smarter he got). One other thing. Sport divers are taught never to dive alone. Paid divers do what they have to, including working alone underwater (dad was right).

We were in the water for at least 8 hours a day except for the 24 hours preceding a flight (risk of the bends and stuff like that).  And we worked…boy did we work. At the end of each day we had just enough strength to drag our gear into our motel room, wherever it was, and crash.

At the time, visibility at the lower end of Lake Champlain was inches at best. Most of our work was done by touch and feel. While we wore 1/4” wetsuits to keep warm, we did not wear gloves or hoods.

The second summer was dedicated to retrieving the collection devices we had planted one year earlier. We had the surveyors’ coordinates but we still had to use accepted underwater search methods.

Since we had no real visibility in Lake Champlain, I would reach out with a free, ungloved hand when I thought I was close to my mark. As I did so on one dive, I began to feel the water move around me. I’d felt this before and recognized it as a larger body swimming close by. Before I could do anything, something VERY large came into contact with my hand. It was so large that I could not close my hand against it. The body was smooth and undulating as it swam by. Here’s the embarrassing part…I screamed as loud as I could underwater.

My co-worker was working in the water at the same time, heard my scream and was able to locate me within a minute or so. I felt him trying to force his spare regulator into my mouth. As I learned later, he thought I had lost my regulator and, according to emergency procedures, he was trying to give me air. I didn’t need that, I needed to exit the water, which we did.

When we were safely on board our leased boat and I caught my breath, I related my story to our guide. Apparently bored with my recitation, he told me it was just a large catfish. To my mind that was one really big catfish. What did I know? We finished that project and moved on to the next. (After all, I was still being paid.)

A couple of weeks later while waiting for a flight, I bought a paperback book (remember those?) to read on the plane. It was about mysteries throughout the world, including the Loch Ness Monster. As I read, I learned about “Champ”, Lake Champlain’s version of the Loch Ness phenomenon. I’d never heard of Champ until then.

Until someone can convince me otherwise, I’ve met Champ (or maybe a large prehistoric Sturgeon?).

That’s what exists in my mind to this day. That’s what I felt and that’s what I choose to believe. I met Champ!

We all have to make very personal decisions about our present condition and situation. Many of these will be predicated on what we believe and what we don’t. My prayer is that we all make the correct decisions as we navigate these murky waters.

We have to do our best to decide what we see in front of us and what we choose to believe. Or as the celebrated 21st century philosopher, Dr. Phil says, “Perception is reality”.

No matter what, we will survive. We will persevere. We will change and reorganize. We will recategorize and we will overcome this adversity.

Please, as always, be well and be safe. Think of yourselves, your loved ones and even those you don’t know-while acknowledging they are traveling a similar path.

And definitely be careful of those 18 wheelers!  

“Gratias agimus tibi”,
- Chief David Goldstein