What is it about the beach anyway? Folks always get reflective at the shore. Walk the sands, sit and bury toes deep, feel the wind, and stare out at the horizon in search of inspiration.
Yada, yada, yada…..but why? Do we sense the edge, the beginning, or the end? Is it the sound of the tumbling waves, the giving and the taking? Then there is the rejection of debris on the beach and the retraction of clean water filtered by the sands.
Pretty therapeutic, eh? Both mentally and physically. It is no surprise peoples have been living along shorelines predominantly until they began to farm and use the better soils inland. He feels no different staring out at these big waters than the many other eyes over the last many hundreds of years. We always hope to feel alone, and the first and only to see what we see, but no, that’s just that bothersome ego driving.
There actually is more human value to be derived from the communal aspects of sharing and interacting with our fellows, both past and present. As opposed to reaching the shore and thinking about oneself, the opportunity presents itself to allow the mind to conjure images of others on this same shoreline. He can see faint images of men pulling their large birch bark canoes up onto these same sands, and sitting in the shade of these same trees, under the warmth of this same sun.
We are lost in time. We try to capture it on a timepiece to no avail. It escapes us. But yet, the calmer the present moment becomes, the more the past, and future to for that matter, emerge. Listen, and look closely.
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