The Shore

I swim in this ocean we call life.

 

We start on the shore in our mother’s womb. It’s safe, it’s warm, and that’s all we need.

 

We grow a little older, and we wade in the shallows. When big waves come along, we retreat to the safety of home, of the shore.

 

We get to high school and college, and we are tempted to wade further out. Never quite leaving the bottom, we still manage to get in over our heads sometimes, but the safety of shore is never truly far from sight.

 

And then we HAVE to make our own way. We hear rumors of ANOTHER shore, some other place away beyond our sight. But to get there, we have to step out on our own.

 

Some of us never really make that step. We live in the same areas as our parents, our friends from high school, our flotsam collected along the way. We never lose sight of that first shore we came from, playing just beyond the breakers, but never pushing further.  It makes us feel safer, not being in that great big ocean alone.

 

Some of us push off and make our way into deeper waters. We swim out past where we can see the shore. But we keep trying to look back, keep trying to keep our heads above water. We swim against the currents to try to get to some predetermined location we have fixed in our minds. And so eventually we either drown, or we swim back to the shore because it’s too hard to do otherwise.

 

We can flounder and splash and complain on the surface all we want, but the ocean never changes, never hears, never cares.

 

Still fewer of us  push off and never look back. We swim in the currents, letting them push us where they want us to go. They help us conserve energy. They do occasionally push us away from people we’d rather not part with, but we trust the currents are taking us in the right direction. We ride out the storms by diving underneath the turbulent surface to the calm water underneath. They help us see that trouble is usually very shallow. And we keep going, keep swimming, never quite knowing that there is something else out there, but sure that we can never go back to where we were.

 

 

And so, I keep swimming. Always forward, and never back.