L'association COP GIRONDE
La mer... une école de vie !
En mer, l’homme apprend à vivre avec les autres
La mer est le lieu du questionnement de la vie
La mer pousse à vivre l'excellence
Il est urgent de porter à la connaissance
de tous les valeurs vécues par les marins,
non pas parce que ce milieu serait supérieur aux autres,
mais parce qu’il révèle de façon synthétique et aiguë
des valeurs indispensables à la croissance de l’homme
et à sa vie en société, quels que soient les lieux,
la culture ou la religion, où celles-ci doivent être vécue.
On the occasion of World Maritime Day (September 30)
[The maritime review] Dialogue with the sea - The sea and its humanizing values
The sea ... a school of life!
It is the place par excellence where man learns to live with nature in direct confrontation with the elements. At sea, the sailor cannot ignore them, he must adapt and respect them. Because of the fluidity of the waters that no one can hold or contain, man is unable to live in it or on it spontaneously.
The sea pushes, stimulates, invites, the man with the audacity - always, the embarkation was a risk - it pushes him to the technical imagination (construction of ships, port installations, exploration of the seabed, pose cables ...). It forces him by what it leads to observe rules to live there and survive there. The environment demands from man an additional humanity.
One can object that the mountain too, the desert too. Yes ! but the sea, more than the mountain or the desert, is necessary for the life and development of man. If he must venture there at all costs, he cannot do it at all costs! We can neither ignore the sea, nor approach it without a quality of being which will have to take into account and respect the requirements of nature.
At sea, man learns to live with others. The sea represents a place par excellence where we learn to respect the place of the other in this existential structure that is the ship, which, whatever its size, appears so small in the immensity of the waters. She learns to respect the rules of life, to keep balance. On land, things do not arise with the same acuteness. She also learns honor, a sense of community, humility, availability, bravery, patience, solidarity, the relationship to time and space, the sense of commitment that can go as far as sacrifice of one's life, a sense of adaptation to a changing environment, a sense of community, of the mission entrusted, of a job well done. It is a school of freedom and represents an extraordinary place of learning for life in society. The sea reveals man to himself - Man learns to live with himself.
The sea is the place to question the meaning of life. Travel time is a time of permanent alternation between introversion and extraversion. The sea situates man in the universe more than the desert or the mountain can still do because the sea is an almost obligatory passage for man's life.
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Our life is conditioned by the presence of the sea whether we like it or not, whether we know it or ignore it. The sea reveals humanity in us and in others. She learns and reveals judgment. Any act of one engages the other. He often engages him in matters of life and death. The sea, more than any other geographical reality, is an ideal place to challenge human conscience: is the relationship between man and the sea a relationship of possession, enhancement of wealth, selfish lust or sharing?
The sea encourages people to experience excellence because it is a difficult environment where life and death are involved more frequently than elsewhere. It helps bring out the best in humans and mobilize their vital energy.
Conversely, it is also the place where the loss of values and the non-recognition of these human values are also revealed: when the life of others is put at stake by economic constraint, by taking too great a risk. in sport or boating, for certainty that insurance or SNSM are there at our service, through any form of violence as well. The sea unambiguously reveals humanizing situations as well as those which are dehumanizing. The sea is a good place of reflection where the essential questions of the meaning of man in nature arise and where there are also some answers.
This concerns all men, all men, those who are on dry land and those who risk themselves on the seas. In a world where we too often show the negative side of maritime events (natural disaster, ecological, acts of piracy ...), it is urgent to bring to the knowledge of all the values lived by sailors, not because this environment would be superior to the others but because it reveals in a synthetic and acute way the values essential to the growth of man and his life in society, whatever the places, the culture or the religion where these must be lived.
A life on the oceans
This World Maritime Day is dear to me.
I am certainly an artist musician but also former Senior Petty Officer (WHO) in the rank of Principal Petty Officer.
Throughout my career (35 years) in the embarked National Navy, I have traveled nautical miles with my comrades on all seas; I have seen lighthouses, semaphores. I have also worked for the maintenance of PEACE in the world throughout my long career and carried out humanitarian missions.
So many contributions that I consider as "records of service in the service of the State, then a bunch of services in the service of life ...!"
I am an "artist committed to an essential cause, that of protecting all living organisms on our old earth" ... I made it my mission in all humility. "I sing because it awakens the altruistic in me, it is a response to the challenges of our time". I make it a civic act to give “the best of myself in the service of all. "
These memories at sea are indelible markers - The sea is a school of life. It is the place par excellence where man learns to live with nature in direct confrontation with the elements. At sea, the sailor cannot ignore them, he must adapt and respect them. The sea reveals humanity in us and in others. The sea is a good place of reflection where the essential questions of the meaning of man in nature arise and where there are also some answers.
This concerns all men, all men, those who are on dry land and those who risk themselves on the seas.
