Sometimes I feel stranded on land.
When I am out of the water, I feel like I am empty, wasting away, drying up so to speak. A quart low on ocean is my mantra. I pine for my return and explaining to people always seems empty and short of meaning. I flounder, no pun intended, wriggling around and using words like “soul and connected, at peace and energized.”
When I return to the ocean I breathe a sigh of relief and feel calmed. Tears well up in my eyes and I feel safe and at home, like a young child returning from the first overnight trip to an uncle and aunts house out of town. My nose swells on the inhalation that vibrates into my lungs and reaches out through all the capillaries, tingling as it goes, energizing my entire being in rhythm with the ebb and flow. My ears remark to the other senses how they have missed the crashing waves and spray splashing back on itself. My feet scream loudly, “get these shoes off now!” They maniacally panic, entreating my fingers to scramble loose the shoestrings and tear back the rubber or leather, roll up pant legs and run. Run don’t walk, into the froth and ah, the, sea, soaks, into, every, pore, of, my, body – oh . . my . . god . . now I can relax and sigh, settle, and talk to the shoulders and let them sag. Now my breathing can gain the pace it longs for and didn’t even know it. Now my silent meditation, my living meditation can begin. I am home. I am safe. I am here where I belong. Can I go in completely now? Is it time to go below and sink down slowly and see my old friends the starfish?
I hope so.
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