Why yes company orientation class, my spirit animal IS a Sperm Whale.
Let me explain why…
I know what you’re thinking. ‘What the fuck? You told a room of corporate strangers that your spirit animal was a sperm whale? Let me get this straight, you had just landed a new role at Cool Tech Company and you were in orientation, and when the HR person asked for everyone to go around the room — all thirty of you — and tell your spirit animal as an icebreaker, you answered with sperm whale? Those are the words that came out of your mouth?’
Why yes they were, and I have a great reason for it! If you would just listen to me for one goddamn second.
A sperm whale is an incredible creature. Did you know how deep they can dive? So deep! They can plunge themselves into the depths of the black ocean, where the primordial creatures live. With the ones that have that little bulbous light hanging over their eyes and all the squiggly eel-like creatures that slither and snake around down there. I like to go deep with people. I prefer deep conversations over surface ones. I’m an introvert, you see.
There’s a passage in Moby Dick that strikes me. There She Blows! Ahh, off to pursue young life’s old routine. What a poet Melville was. There. She. Blows. The beauty of the waterspout spurting mist into the dawn sky. No time for rest fellow men of the sea. We have toiled all night, elbows deep in the spermiceti of our last kill, the most valuable part see? As men of the boat, we are exhausted, tired, and want to rest. But such is life! For once we have cleaned up the mess, and all seems ordered and right…
There.
She.
Blows.
And again and again we race off to pursue the routines of our youth. What a beautiful image!
Can’t you see it? I could have chosen lion as my spirit animal, like Barry. Or dolphin, like Sarah did, but that wouldn’t have been honest. And a little boring, you know? Sorry Sarah, but everyone chooses dolphin. Fuck dolphin.
But the sperm whale is unique and majestic.
And, it’s the only living cetacean with a single blowhole placed on the left side of the top of the head, asymmetrically nonetheless. Just wow! Wow! Its blowhole is asymmetrical. What this means to me is the sperm whale’s blowhole isn’t perfectly placed, but corrects to the side. It isn’t perfect, and neither am I! Nobody is perfect. We’re all just like the blowhole of a sperm whale, tilted a little to the side, you know?
I could have picked Jaguar like Brent did, but they’re too perfect and sleek and expected. Not the sperm whale though.
I stand by my spirit animal. Why are you all staring at me? Oh for fucks sake, Jeremy, bald eagle?
