If you stand on the beach long enough, after a while all you can hear is the ocean.
Your ears will strain for a sound other than her mighty whisper, her gentle roar. You will long for the distraction of a passing car, a bird overhead, the wind in the trees, but all else has died away. There is nothing but her. She surrounds you and folds you into her. You become her. And she becomes you.
The ocean has been here from the beginning. She will outlive you and your children and your children’s children. Wave after wave crashes onto the beach, and somehow the sound washes you clean. Close your eyes or open them – it’s all the same. She will continue to wear into you, into your soul, into your very core.
Relentlessly, patiently, she created the sand beneath your feet. The very shoreline you walk is a result of her inexorable will borne upon the earth.
From the moment you were conceived, the tides born from crescent moons spoke to you through the amniotic fluid that sustained your life, whispering moonlight over crashing waves and asking you to come and play, come and play. And as you stand here on the shore she wells up inside of you, and you realise she has been calling you from the beginning, before you were delivered and every day since. You’ve heard her in the rustle of leaves. You’ve smelled her in a hint of salt on the breeze. A full moon leaving you empty and lost. A river a promise of what is to come.
And now you are here.
And when your senses are overloaded with the sound, the smell, the taste of her; when the salt on your skin and the sand at your feet have left you feeling raw; when the sun sets behind the mountain setting the sky on fire showing you colours you’ve only dreamed: you will ask her what she wants from you. Why are you here? What should you do? What does she want from you? The questions will keep coming until you think you will go mad.
The ocean has a lesson for us all.