It is hard to explain, unless you come from a family like the one I grew up in, how you can have laughter among the tears when the bad parts of life interfere with the good. There are times when I feel this is one of, if not THE greatest lesson I can give my children. We stood huddled together on the beach on Sunday night saying goodbye to our sweet kitty and through the tears came the jokes and funny remembrances. You see, life goes on and though bad things happen, it is the joy that keeps us going.
We are blessed to live on a perfect and beautiful planet where all of our needs are met by the environment around us. I am sometimes distressed and saddened by the greed and over consumption that grips our world and brings destruction upon that which sustains us. Whether your go-to place is the top of a mountain or at the beach, spending a week of time in nature reminds us what is beautiful and perfect and that we must protect it at all costs. We lived very simply last week and this week I continue to evaluate how we can do this to an even greater degree. Maybe you will too.
There were nights when we were down on the beach and though I could not see well I could hear the power of the waves crashing toward me. There is something about hearing that sound but not seeing what is coming that is very powerful and humbling. Even more powerful is looking up at the sky while hearing those sounds and seeing more stars than can ever be counted by the naked eye. The Universe around me is immense and I know in that moment that I am only a particle of sand that makes up the whole.
As I watching the Sun and the Moon playing on the beach and in the surf I was reminded that I have been given a gift and that this gift is fleeting in the span of this lifetime. How do I make their childhood and my time with them count?
There are days when I feel the years creeping up on me. I have tried to forget as much of my life or move beyond it at any rate than I can remember. But there have been great joys as well. There are few things like picking up a board and running into the surf that teach you to truly enjoy life and be in the moment. I'll spare you the photos (though Nathan took some) but in them you can see the joy we all had in those moments.
When
you take a break from your "real" life (isn't all life real?)...in
other words, when you take a step back from your day to day life, when
you step out of your routine, you see a whole other world around you
there for the taking. Life moves quickly and I am still young. Are
there dreams I want to achieve that I have not yet accomplished? A
week at the beach had me seeing each of those distant stars as dreams
that I can achieve in this life and I have many!
I have no idea how large our condo was last week. 1200 square feet? 1500? Certainly no more. It was an old hotel that has been renovated into single owner condos. Each one was made up of four hotel rooms that have been gutted and put back together into amazing high end units. Throughout the week I marveled that we had few toys (none other than beach toys), a small but well appointed kitchen combined with a dining and living room and two beautiful bedrooms. It was all piled into three rooms plus two small bathrooms. I did take our panini maker and Nutro-Bullet. Otherwise, there was nothing we needed that we did not have the entire week. I know it seems like numbers 2 and 7 are the same but there are different messages in each one. And, these messages are important enough to say again and again.
Now that we are home I am listening to the messages from last week and working to apply them to our lives each day. Maybe one of these messages will resonate with you or maybe you'll be inspired to take your own break from the mundane to see what messages the Universe holds for you.
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