Dinesen recognizes that healing isn't about escape or comfort—it's about moving through difficulty with your whole body engaged. The genius lies in treating three forms of salt water as morally equivalent: the sweat of honest labor carries the same redemptive weight as grief's tears or the indifferent vastness of the ocean. A marathoner who finally breaks through months of frustration knows this intimately—the physical exhaustion that seemed unbearable becomes, paradoxically, the thing that dissolves the mental knot she couldn't untie from her desk chair. She's saying that sometimes the cure requires you to stop waiting for insight and instead become wet.