As If By Magic

I head out a little after 10:15 this morning. It’s a late start but turns out that is for the best. It’s a beautiful sunny day on this Labor Day’s eve - at least it is here at my apartment. Looking out my balcony toward the coast, I see a big bank of clouds and the beach from the web cam looks less than summery and shinney. However by the time I get all my morning to dos done, things look much improved.

I get to the beach and it looks pretty much as you would expect for a beautiful, warm day on the day before Labor Day. There are plenty of people here already but other than the surfers, no one is in the water. What is the matter with these people? I’m happy to see that the lifeguard station is open and staffed. This might just be the last weekend I see this until May. I’ll take every last bit of Summer that I can get while it is here for the taking.

I just love the fact that today I have absolutely nothing that I have to get back home to in any hurry. This is so rarely the case and I intend to milk this time for all that I can. A longish swim and as I am walking to my starting spot it occurs me that I can treat myself with a post swim walk. Oh how great that will be especially on a sunny and warm day like today.

I start walking out into the water and a larger set of waves rolls in and I decide to wait it out. Once it looks like the last one has broken, I’m off. The water is a little bumpy but not too bad. I swim north and seem to be moving against the current but there is just so much to like out here right now that a little resistance seems hardly worth noting, but of course I will here. Just what kind of a swim report would this be if I didn’t?

My intention right now is to offer up all my cares to the ocean because it cares for me. I continue to find myself torn between action and non-action. I feel this urge to “do something.” I have these dilemmas in my life and I simply do not know how to resolve them. I feel tossed about by the suggestions that come from all over the place, both from without and within. Conventional wisdom (whatever that is) says one thing. This audio book says this thing. My therapist chimes in with her opinion. My fears and yearnings certainly have some ideas.

I feel compelled to give this all up. For the last several years I feel like life is trying to teach me about surrender but I have hardly gotten through the first few lessons. I may have gained some intellectual knowledge that I can bandy about but I’m not sure how successful I have been in actually applying it. I’m plagued with “should I do that or should I do this” and the tension can drive me nuts. So what if I do nothing? And give the universe the opportunity to help. I don’t think this means to idly sit back and just hope everything works itself out on its own. I think it is more about giving my mind a break and releasing myself from anxiety and placing myself in a headspace where better thoughts might prevail.

I just don’t think that letting anxious energy lead my decisions is going to yield the best results. If I can come to a place of relaxation, perhaps then ideas can organically arise that make sense and work. I’ve seen this happen again and again on mundane problems at work. Mundane but sometimes extremely complicated engineering problems. I’ll wrestle and wrestle and wrestle and seem to get nowhere. Then I go to sleep or walk or exercise and “not think about it” and then, as if by magic, the solution comes. It is crazy sometimes. And when the solution does come, it can come in a sudden flash of insight. What took hours of fiddling gets solved in a couple minutes. So I’m saying good bye to trying to figure out these problems. I might need to wait longer than the duration of this swim. I feel like I need to commit to letting go here. It can feel like these problems can’t wait that long, but they can.

As I get close to the Monarch Bay Beach Club, these Terns come flying out to me. I could swear they are actually flying to ME. They have the entire ocean to frolic. Why would they choose to circle around right where I am right now. I love these birds. I just recently discovered whet kind of bird these are. They are really pretty. They are mostly white and they glow in the light of the sun. They fly away and then come back several times.

Eventually it seems they have lost interest in me. The feeling is definitely not mutual but I can take a hint and I continue on. I swim all the way to the Monarch Bay Beach Club. There are a ton of people on the beach along the entire shore of Salt Creek. I can hear yelling and screaming all the way out here. It’s all good. I enjoy it. It is the yelling and screaming of children having fun in the water.

I turn around and head back to where I started. I swim with the current now and I have the shore on my breathing side which I thoroughly enjoy staring at. The water is so so pleasant. Some find swimming boring but I don’t think there is anything boring about this swim.

I get back to the shore and the crowds have definitely increased since I got here. It no longer feels like morning. Probably because it isn’t. I’m sure it is past noon by now. I take my walk and oh yes it is so good.