Amazing and Wonderful Things

The air feels noticeably cooler here this morning. It almost feels cold but it totally is not. It’s just not super warm. It’s nice. I actually rolled away my portable AC into my spare bedroom where I hope it will stay for some time. Conditions look good for a swim today: surf is down a bit. My only concern is the tide and beach/sand levels. I leave my home at 8:30 and the tide is 3 feet and rising. This would normally present no issues. However, there is so little sand on the north end of the beach (none on the south) that the beach disappears as it nears 4 feet.

I get to the beach parking lot and exit my car and again I note the novel coolness in the air. However, I also notice the sun shining on my skin. It is very pleasant. As I walk down the stairs, a procession of individuals are heading up with large weights in their hands. This is not an uncommon sight here. I mean I have never seen so many people coming up with these large weights in their arms but I am always seeing all sorts of excercisy shenanigans on these stairs. People love to work out here. Why wouldn’t they?

I see the beach and it is pretty much as I expect. There is not much to walk on if you don’t want to get wet. Fortunately I want to get wet. The walkers are walking up above the rocks. It looks like there is less sand than my last swim a few days ago and there is more bare cobble. There is a big swell due for Saturday to Tuesday. If the forecasts are correct, it will be the largest of the season. I wonder what that will do for whatever sand we have left here. It’s not uncommon to see a sandless beach here in Winter or early Spring, but I have not yet seen this in the Summer. There are a lot of people blaming all sorts of local government projects and municipal authorities for these sandless conditions. Maybe they are right? However, it seems that almost every year I see some kind of anomalous behavior that I have not seen before. “Before” meaning the six years since returning to this area. I did grow up here as a child and adolescent but I honestly was not paying attention then like I do today. I tend to think most people do not pay attention - not because they are dense. I wouldn’t either unless I was here every other day and writing in detail about everything I see.

When I feel the water on my feet, it feels extra warm. The Capistrano buoy was reporting 77 degrees which is definitely very warm. However I wonder if the cooler air is also making the water feel warmer. I’m trying to decide where to get into the water. There is a lot of cobble between me and my usual entry point. I decide to get in a little earlier so that I don’t have to walk over it. I head in and then a set of small waves comes in. They are small but they are breaking right on these rocks and I figure I’ll back up and wait it out. I do and then I walk in quickly and start swimming as soon as I reach the first dip on the floor that takes me from shin to waist high water in a single step. Oh my god this water is so comfy. It is comfy and it’s just a beautiful morning. There is not much to see below the surface which has been the case for weeks now. However it is not quite as bad as it has been. I can at least see my hands and arms clearly below me. I swim north.

I try to relax my mind and just savor this feeling of the warm water. I am mulling over these thoughts I have been having for the past day or so. I have had a recent epiphany that has basically reinforced some ideas that have been taking shape inside of me for the past several years. I have written about them quite a lot here and now I am going to write about them again. I feel this compulsion to TRY to get to this particular place. I want the love, happiness, money, and vocation that I think will make everything better. I imagine that in order to achieve all of this, I need to push and try harder. I worry that if I do not try harder then I will never achieve these things. They will always exist just out of reach. However, I feel like God has been trying to teach me something different.

All of this pushing and trying is actually what keeps these things out of reach. The pushing and trying wreaks havoc with my nervous system and prevents me from being able to relax and assume a properly receptive posture. The pushing and trying results in me envisioning a future that does not exist instead of surrendering to the present that is actually happening now. The pushing and trying limits my vision of the possibilities that are arising out of my present circumstances. I think that if I can relax and just focus on what is happening now and in front of me, I will be able to see the pathways that will lead me into a future of freedom. I don’t think it is wrong to imagine the future we want to have - far from it, but we have to be able to hold that imagination loosely. Life happens one surprise after surprise after surprise.

If I can relax and release my efforts that fight for a very specific vision of tomorrow, I think I will find a new way of moving over the surface of this earth that leads me to amazing and wonderful things. These things may look different from what I had imagined but they might give me a similar feeling to what it was I was hoping to find. I think the chances are that it will be an even better feeling. I think I simply need to follow my joy. I need to identify what it is that gives me pleasure and lean towards that. I have to lean into joy instead of compulsion or desperation. I need to set aside the fear that tells me that if I don’t work work work for that perfect outcome I imagine, then I will be forever stuck.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not talking about avoiding hardships or doing nothing in some sort of world of magical thinking. I think hardship is part of it and needs to be faced. There will be very hard work. We choose our hardships and the work we decide to take on. I think this is very much part of learning to choose well. How do we choose the work and hardships that will lead us into more life and how do we slough off the work and hardships that want to rob us of our energy. It’s not easy to see all this. Sometimes we have to stick with the soul sucking tasks for a while to get to the other side. Sometimes we have to say good riddance. How do we decide? How do we know? I think only by having our experiences and paying attention to what is happening inside and around us. Bit by bit we get better. We learn. We make better choices. We learn to surrender and not try so hard. We learn what feels right and what feels wrong.

On the swim back to where I started I see a truck carrying away the Jr. Lifeguard equipment that they keep near the northern bathrooms. I have witnessed this truck before. Maybe it was last year. How is it that I just so happen to be at this spot in the water when this is happening two years in a row? Good buy Jr. Lifeguards. It was a delight seeing you here over this very short (too short) summer. I get out of the water and climb the stairs. I hear what sounds like a drone and notice there is a large one washing the upstairs windows of the office building that sits just north of the parking lot. Wow. That is clever. I would have never thought of using a drone to wash windows, but somebody did. I wonder how that thought came. Did it come after struggling to find a way to reach those high windows? Or did it come in a flash of insight when the mind was relaxed and possibly thinking of something totally different.