The last month, I have spent a lot of time away from the sea. From the concrete towers of Taipei to the snowy Swiss hills and grassy fields of the French countryside… every time I looked out into the distance, there was never that familiar flat horizon line to be seen. Coming back to the south coast, I can walk to the shore and, although it’s a shorter segment than in Australia, I can look out and cut the view in half. Sky, sea, and the line that divides them. Simple and clean.
When I listen to the seascape, I find that I learn a lot about life. When you see from afar, it seems clear cut… but when you put your toes in the sand and really look, you can see life coming at you in waves. I’m learning the same lesson over time, which is that if you want to enjoy life then you’ll need to find a way to ride these waves. They don’t always have to loom high and crash low, but things are always changing…
I try to go out at least once a day here and observe the water. Unlike the wild Indian Ocean cupping the coastline of my hometown, the Mediterranean is most often in a mild mood. She rarely gets angry, and maybe that’s what she teaches the people who live on her shores… that life can be enjoyed more when the waves are smaller.
So often, I have clashed with my urge to be ambitious. Set your goals, work hard and don’t stop until you achieve what you want. But this can be tiring, and unsatisfying… especially because there seem to be so many things out of our control that get in the way of our success. Spending my time watching waves form has taught me that time is needed to gather momentum before we can observe the effects of our actions.
If you look a little further back along the coastline, you will see that not all the little dark blue hills make it to their foamy demise on land. Sometimes the momentum of the wave gets absorbed back into the mass of water from which it came within a moment after it was created. But if you look for long enough, you can see that one of the waves will absorb all others in its path. It will get bigger and bigger, until it pushes itself up and curls over, reaching out its frothy fingers and then crash. It dissipates and gets pulled back into the mass.
The last few days, I have felt like I’m riding one of those waves far at the back. Bopping up and down, seeing if it’s the right moment yet to slide into the shore. At these times, it can feel like I’m lost… just a small, unrecognisable part of one big sea of voices trying to be heard. It’s easy to get discouraged, but we must hold out and allow ourselves to gather momentum. I’ve been quietly walking around the old streets, letting myself feel which direction I’d like to move towards next.
Sometimes just floating and not being where the action is seems like a risk, but it is one that we need to take. After a while, we come to recognise that feeling of momentum building within us… and if we can learn to let it build, rather than force it… we can let it push us along to exactly where we need to be.
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