Lessons from the Sea

Barnegat Light, New Jersey, 2006

It was my father who taught me to not be afraid of the sea.  As a child, on vacations to Portugal, he would take me into the wild waters of Nazaré.  I don't remember how old I was, but I have vivid memories of feeling tiny and frail as I held onto a rope that attached somewhere far into the ocean.  I think perhaps I was 6.  The waves would come, tall, taller than me sometimes, and his message was always the same - hold on tight, don't be afraid.

I remember the rough feel of that rope against my tiny hands.  I remember the determination (not fear) with which I held on as the waves came towards me.  Sometimes, they knocked me off my feet, and I would tumble under the waves, swallow salt water, feel myself as a small creature of tangled limbs and wonder where the sea would take me.  But I was never afraid.

He also taught me the fine art of riding a wave - how to spot a good one, and how to time your jump just right.  Sometimes, when we were out there, the tide would start to move to high tide, and the sea would tug on us more and more, pulling us in towards higher and higher waves.

I think a person's first instinct is to run from such waves, and from that deep pulling over which you have absolutely no control.  Don't run! my father taught me from the beginning.  If you run, they will just come and get you, knock you over, you'll get lost in them.  You have to swim towards them.

This seemed counter intuitive at the time - why would I swim towards a big giant wave that was already pulling me too far from shore and about to crash over my head and take me with it?

As unnerving as it was, he was right.  If you swim towards a wave just right, you will rise up gently with the swell and then suddenly find yourself behind it, away from danger.  Behind the place where the waves break there is a calmer place.  You can swim as far away from shore as you dare.  (I often did this as a teenager, while my poor hydrophobic mother stood on shore trying to keep track of my bobbing head in the distance.)

The ocean is one of my single favourite things in the universe.  All year round, when I am not near it, I feel something quietly tugging at some deep part of my soul, as if the tide is trying to pull me back, even from such a great distance away.

Even when I am near the ocean, I am not content unless I am in it.  Only then does that subtle tugging stop; only then can I breathe deeply and relax, longing quenched.

When I am in the ocean, it is a very private experience.  It is almost meditative, in that I have to focus so intently and completely on the tidal rhythms, to the exclusion of all other thoughts.  Perhaps others do not take the ocean as seriously as I do, but I know no other way.  It is a complete submission for me.  We all have a need to devote ourselves to something, I think.  Whether it be religion, political ideals, music-making, dance, the list goes on... there seems to be something about human nature that needs to submit, to completely let go of our own will and let a "higher power" other than ourselves take over.

I find it a deeply freeing experience; to let myself be pulled, be drawn in; to give up any notion of where I'd like to be or what I'd like to do; to go towards what I'm afraid of and let the waves decided where I end up...

There is no explaining this feeling; no way to communicate it to someone who doesn't already know it.

I had more thoughts, but the sound of the surf has erased them...

 

Avalon, New Jersey, 2011

Avalon, New Jersey, 2011

Nazaré, Portugal, 2010