It’s back to quiet mornings by the beach, even if the sky is a little heavy. There’s always someone out there testing the waves, freshening themselves up in the salt water. Even if I don’t go inside, I breathe in the scent of the ocean and I appreciate the atmosphere. I close my eyes and listen to that soothing white noise, I try to breathe in the same rhythm. I repeat the words of Rilke which I’m sure I’ve shared before: When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused. I think I love the water, because it is the one thing that connects me still to Australia even when I am far away. Even if I do not swim often, I can still put my bare feet in the sand or on the pebbles and I can still dip my toes in the soft lapping of the shore. It connects me back to where I really belong.
There is nothing like the ocean to make us feel small again. To make us realise that although we may have travelled there is still a world beyond and beneath us which is unknown. Depths which we may never know. Strange creatures, which we may never meet, swim below and breathe in a thick air they call H2O. The seas and the oceans keep us humble, and make sure that we don’t live in the illusion of control for too long. The ground isn’t solid there, it dances, always shifting and never sure. It feels a bit more comfortable that way, a little more like home. Because maybe with all our shifting moods, we’re never quite certain of where we are and where we go. The water covers the earth, like a big blue hand. It scrunches us together as it constantly kisses the sand. It reminds us that in this big, big world, there are only a few people who we truly love. Although we wish harm for no one, there are only some who touch our heart. Only a few, out of this big big world, who we are brave enough to open ourselves to.
It makes me wonder, why do I worry about the small things in life? Whether a person said this or that, or the meaning of their actions. If someone loves me or hates me, or if I am good enough or not. When I look at the ocean, I see the real answer which is: so what? The only thing that matters is how I feel, and whether I can reach towards feeling good. In this moment, and in the next, and the one after that too. It makes it clear to me that life is what I am willing to make of it. So what is it that I choose? I think that I choose it all. Happiness, sadness, madness and peace. All that life is made to be. The good and bad both help us grow. Both are to be grateful for. And that’s what the ocean tends to do, even when I’m not on the shore. Whether I watch it from a window, from my minds eye or maybe from the top of a mountain. Its sound, its smell, its colours sing back to me the song of home. That even though I’m only a drop, I am made of the same stuff as the others. Love and bones and blood and sweat, that’s all we are and that’s all we’ll get.
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