On the last day of August, with school starting this week for many of us, it’s a good time to reflect on some summer lessons from the sea. I’m from the Ocean State, Rhode Island, with its miles of sandy beaches. I love going to the beach to swim, sun, and walk on the tide’s edge. But also I like just sitting and looking out over the water. The horizon line never fails to fill me with a sense of wonder, singing as it does of life’s far and unknown borders.
People say of difficult situations, It wasn’t a day at the beach. But life is like a day at the beach. Some days, life is great. The sun is shining and the water sparkles like so many diamonds. There are no clouds, the waves are perfect and you ride them in—all the way to the shore. Life is good.
And then there are those other days when life acts like a monster wave that picks you up and slams you down, churning you like so much wet laundry in the spin cycle, leaving you with a mouth full of salt water, or, like this past weekend, worse. The ferocious riptides on the East Coast this week, courtesy of Hurricanes Danielle and Earl, dragged many out to sea. At Narragansett Beach this past weekend, the air was cut with the sound of rescue sirens, en route to help those caught in a rip’s current.
When life’s difficulties and trials drag you out like a riptide, all you can do is go with the flow. Remember not to swim against the current. Don’t fight it. Stay calm. Have faith. By swimming parallel to the shore, you will eventually find the opening that leads you back to the beach. On days like that, it’s important to surrender, with all the grace that that misunderstood verb implies, and to know that the tide that goes out always comes back in. The ceaseless tides tell us that more important than any one day is the accumulation of many days and small acts—acts of loving kindness, acts of generosity, acts that require impossible leaps of faith. All these add up to a life.
Water’s most remarkable quality is its ability to be simultaneously life giving and erosive. Drop by drop, very gently and persistently, water will wear down the biggest stone. It can take down a mountain. After many years, I’ve come to know that persistence trumps intelligence and talent every time. Most people just don’t hang in there long enough.
The horizon line divides the world into two parts—sky and ocean. That distant but ever-present, reassuring line marks the place where earth and heaven connect, where people come together in all their vulnerability and mystery. It’s a cosmic timeline, marking the brief moment of our own lives, as well as the lifetimes of those who lived before us, and those still to come. As summer comes to a bittersweet end, it’s good to sit on a beach and remember that you have a place in eternity.
