Chase Life, Live life

There is something about the ocean that makes you pause. Unless of course you are M and you throw yourself right into it! As I watched my little man playing and being carefree, I thought about many things. This week has given me a lot to consider. There is a calm that comes from staring at something so powerful and daunting.

As I sat on the beach, watching M and contemplating the one thing that confuses me the most....Me, I realized that life is not only short, but that we spend so much time in self-preservation mode that we forget the one thing that no one wants to thing about. We are trying to preserve something that will in the end perish. We spend so much time trying to race the clock, develop the perfect life, the perfect relationship and to be something we are not. We guard the one thing that we should set free. Ourselves.

I am the queen of guarding myself. It is a fact and it is done in self-preservation. We think, we can't handle this break up, or the loss of that job. We think that we are protecting ourselves from getting hurt, when the truth is we are hurting ourselves.

How? Let me tell you how. By guarding our hearts, we push people away. Some people come in our lives for a short time, kind of like a passerby, glimpsing into the windows of the life we have built, but we have surrounded it in curtains so that no one can see in. Some people are meant to stay and share in the wonder that is our lives and make it better, these are the ones we have slightly opened the curtain for. Some people insert themselves in our lives to be closer to us, to try to cling on to the little shred of us that they desire, and we know that we should push them away, but for some crazy reason, we push away the ones that should stay. So in the end, we don't live, we survive. We don't chase life, we chase loneliness and isolation

How did I get all that from watching the ocean?

It was more so a combination of the ocean and watching M's childlike innocence at the wonder and beauty of the world. Carelessly, without caution, throwing himself into the unknown waters of a raging ocean. Innocently exploring every little aspect of the sand, the things he found and just playing.

This week I have seen the ocean from a beach in San Francisco and some cliffs in Mendocino, and each spot gave me this immense feeling of calm and peacefulness. This is amazing to me in so many ways, one being that I hate water. (Yeah I know, weird). Each spot held a beauty words can't describe and made me want to stay.

So instead of doing my norm of sitting down, watching the scenery and letting it pass without participating
, I joined M in his playing in the water, inspecting the things he found and even writing our names in the sand. Which is another lesson the ocean taught me. As the tide came in and the water erased our names I had written in the sand, I realized that nothing is permanent, even us. We are passerby's in this life and we can leave it by having scraped by and missed out on every opportunity, every perspective relationship, or starting a new adventure and creating new beginnings or we can live it, experience it and feel it.

Sure we are going to get our hearts broken, we are going to get hurt, and we are going to experience things that are not so fun. It's not living if we don't.

As of now, I am going to participate in my own life. Are you willing to do the same? I am going to let down my guard (OK this is not going to be an instant and probably about as fun as drinking instant coffee...ick), I am going to start living my life instead of preserving it.

Now I am not saying don't be careful who you date or to go sky diving (unless you have no fear and really want to). I am saying ,don;t be so guarded that when the right person comes along, the right job lands in your lap you let it pass on by our of fear and self-preservation. Do you really have a choice?

Until the next Scribble.....