Drift
and Breathe
“When
our days are turbulent and troubled, our challenge is to remember that the wave
is not the sea. Though it pounds us, the pounding will pass. Though it tosses
us about, the tossing will pass, if we don’t fight it.”
Mark
Nepo (The Book of Awakening, p.226)
I have
written before about my lack of love for boats and fishing. That goes especially
for salt-water outings on supposedly sea-worthy boats. I recall one trip on a
twenty-eight-foot motorboat out of Block Island to fish for tuna. Once we
motored out of the protective harbor and into the Atlantic, the boat went straight
up the crest of a wave, and crashed down on the other side, and for a moment in
the middle of that swell, we were airborne. That rising and crashing continued until
we were more than a mile away from land, so that the island was still visible,
but only as a dark strip along the horizon. Once into the deep, the waters
calmed and the rises and drops diminished, but by then I was what my
grandmother referred to as “addlepated.”
Mark
Nepo warns against allowing our fear of this swelling and crashing to keep us
close to shore, because the turbulence will dissipate once we reach the deep
water. I recall watching fishermen in a Costa Rican village lead their small, wooden
boats out beyond the breakers of a raging Pacific to calmer water where they could
hoist themselves over the side without being slammed by the cresting waves. They
took this risk every single day to feed their families, and not because it was
great sport. They knew from experience that once beyond the breakers, they
would find calmer water.
We can
take some comfort in that analogy, too. We are struggling through a time of
great turbulence—so much is going on that we (at least, I) have trouble keeping
up with it. It is difficult enough to deal with the confinement of a pandemic,
but a contentious political season on top of it is putting us into the crashing
breakers. If we allow fear to hold us back, we will never get past the bone-crunching
battering of this present moment. We cannot afford to be addlepated. If we can
just drag our little boats past these pounding breakers, we will find smoother
water.
To everyone who is trying
to survive in this current climate, I encourage you to practice deep belly
breathing—calm your fears and allow the turbulence to flow around you. In the
words of Mark Nepo, “Breathe slowly and stroke your way past all the
distraction. When you feel the swell of life around you, simply drift…”
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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