Feel the Wind

Oh sweet sleep. I got close to eight hours last night which is extremely rare. I feel great. I have so many things in my life right now that are feeding my soul and I am ready and eager to get in the water for even more feeding. This is the kind of feeding that one can never get too much of, but that does not mean one can not become satisfied. I feel satisfied.

I’ll be 58 years old next week and I wonder why it has taken me so long to learn some of the things I have. One of those things is how to detect and move in the direction of the light. That may sound rather vague. What the heck is the light? I can’t think of a better phrase right now, but if I could be more specific than that then maybe I would have caught on sooner. Oh and let me be clear that I am still very much in the process of catching on.

An amazing person I met not too long ago commented that I seem to live with intention. I like to think that is true or at least that I have the intention to be intentional. That is SO NOT how I used to live. I remember some important life decisions I have made in my past where I just kind of chose the default outcomes. I made the choices that others made for me or that society and traditions dictated appropriate. I had no clear vision for what it was I wanted. Honestly, I don’t think I was even equipped to construct such a vision. I didn’t really understand who I was and I had sort of messed up ideas of how everything “works.” I at least realized fairly young that many of my society given ideas were garbage but I didn’t have anything solid to swap them out with.

This is undoubtedly a life long process and I often wonder when I reach the age of 88 what I will think of my 58 year old self. Will I think, “if only I knew then what I know now?” What are the ideas I have now that at 88 I will render complete garbage? What new ideas will I have at 88 that will allow me to move with more grace through this life? I can’t wait to find out.

I am beginning to learn that living with intention is much less about becoming clear and certain about what we want and more about trusting that what we truly want is present here to be given to us. It’s about learning what feels right and what feels not so right. It’s about not settling for things that don’t feel great. Sure, I have some vague notions of what I want and I steer towards them but I hold those notions loosely. I have had too many experiences now where what I thought I wanted was garbage and what I did not know I wanted was better than I could have ever imagined. In the end it is about setting our sails and letting it catch the wind of our true and magnificent nature and leaning into that wind. We can’t see the wind. Sometimes we can hear the wind. We can almost always feel the wind.

I once heard a sermon (actually several sermons by a particular pastor) where it was said that if we do not do exactly what the bible tells us to do, then we are simply “picking and choosing” from the buffet of life. The assumption here being that the thing that does the picking and choosing is our sinful nature which will most certainly pick and choose based on the whims of it’s degraded feelings.

I believe that life is all about learning to pick and choose well. I do not believe there is any text, nor could there ever be, that is meant to tell us what to pick and choose. We are here to have a set of human experiences that are all designed to teach us how to do a better job of picking and choosing. We will always make good choices and bad choices but I hope that the former will eventually out number the later. We just have to keep picking and choosing what sparks that light that lives in our hearts. And we just have to become more and more familiar with how to identify that spark.

Oh my. How did that happen? I just sit down here after a swim and write whatever comes into my head and it looks like today a lot has come out that has nothing to do with the swim. Then again, it maybe has everything to do with the swim. Well lets just cover at least the basics of the actual swim because it was great!

It was cloudy when I got up and all the way until I got to the beach at about 9:45. I walk down the stairs and pass the lower bathrooms and turn the corner that turns into a straight shot view of the beach. Just then I feel something on my shoulder. It’s the sun and it feels great.

There are actually some good sized waves coming in and the water looks smooth. The tide is fairly high. I get in the water and soon it seems I am past the surf and I start to swim. I then see I am indeed not past the surf as a larger set comes my way. The largest one breaks in front of me and I dive down as deep as I can just above the floor and watch the sand and small rocks shutter with the vibrations of the crashing wave.

Once I truly am past the waves, I can see the clouds parting and dissipating quickly. I am delighted with this turn of sunnier events. I did not expect it - like many of the finer things in life. I swim north and by the time I reach the Ritz, it’s nearly all sunny skies. Oh this is so great. Also, the water feels wonderful. The Capistrano buoy read 68 degrees when I woke up this morning and that feels about right.

I pause here in front of the lifeguard tower as a large set of waves comes in. I am just slightly north and parallel to the outside pack of surfers. I watch them all rush for the waves and try to catch them. This is fun to watch and It is not often that I am so close to the edge of the surf but I am ever so slightly out far enough where I am quite safe. Honestly, even if these waves broke on me I would be “safe” but I am glad that they are not.

After this set passes, I continue north. I stop and stare at some kelp in front of the golf course just short of the beach club. Then I here something that sounds alive. I mean everything is alive here, but this sounds like it belongs to the animal kingdom. There is a seal or sea lion hanging out just about 20 feet west of me and staring at me like I am staring at it. We take each other in for a while and then I proceed to the beach club.

Once I reach my destination, I head back and the entire swim is delightful and grows more and more luminous. I swim to shore without any wave drama - just how I like it. I get out of the water, walk by the lifeguard hut that says the water is 64 (NOT) and walk up to the stairs, shower, and get in my rental car. Yes - rental car. I’ll just have to explain that little detail in another post because I have wonderful and amazing things to do today as I follow my light.