I was invited to spend New Year\u2019s\u00a0Day with a group of friends at a home on the beach in Malibu. I hadn\u2019t dug my\u00a0feet into the sand for a very long time and it felt great to take a sunset walk\u00a0beside the ocean. We passed a large scattering of dark rocks that hadn’t been
there the day before. They had ridden ashore on the tides, made their way onto\u00a0the beach, and pretty soon, the ocean would reclaim them.<\/p>\n
I stopped beside the rocks and bent\u00a0down to see a tiny crab skittering among shells and seaweed. I was transported\u00a0to my childhood summer home, The Tide Rock House, in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. That\u00a0creaky dwelling had a soul as ancient as the icy sea water that washed against\u00a0the shoreline several hundred yards from the end of the street. I used to climb\u00a0the rocks and poke my small fingers into the sudsy tide pools. I upset small\u00a0fish, miniature crabs with transparent legs, shell chips and seaweed strands,
all scattered amid colorful pieces of broken plastic and the occasional condom\u00a0that I mistook for jellyfish body parts. As I walked along, I gathered unusual\u00a0shell specimens and when I got back to my room at the Tide Rock House, I washed\u00a0off the sand and placed them on top of my wooden dresser.<\/p>\n
One time, a tiny crab crawled out\u00a0of one of the shells. I watched it scramble the length of the old dresser,\u00a0scale down the side and imbed itself in a crack between two stuck drawers. It\u00a0was drawn to the darkness, out of sight and free from intrusion, shielding its
destiny from the hands of a curious little girl. I waited for a while, went to\u00a0have supper and I forgot about the crab until the next day. When I searched for\u00a0it, it was gone. It might have crawled away or fell to the ground and got\u00a0stepped on. I like to think the house protected it until no one was around and\u00a0then somehow helped it get away. There was no way to know. It was a mystery and\u00a0would remain that way, as certain as the ocean water would continue to batter\u00a0the shore.<\/p>\n
This New Year\u2019s day, being at the\u00a0beach and watching a crab sidle along the sand and hide in a bunch of seaweed, reminded\u00a0me how life, like our breath, ebbs and flows,\u00a0delivering gifts, removing them and\u00a0delivering new and different ones over and over. I heard the waves crashing\u00a0against the shore and I realized how little control we have over our lives. The\u00a0tides move in response to the gravitational forces of the moon and the sun. Besides\u00a0that, they have no master. They remind us that everything is in process. We\u00a0have no way to direct it. Like the sea, we have our storms and our times of
peacefulness and then it starts all over again. All we can do is watch and\u00a0marvel.<\/p>\n
During the walk, a friend said, \u201cWhat do you want to happen this year? How do you want your life to look? What are\u00a0your New Year\u2019s resolutions?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have only one. I want to leave\u00a0myself alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean that I\u2019m fine the way I\u00a0am,\u201d I said. \u201cI have no idea what will happen or what will change when I\u2019m not\u00a0looking and I don’t need to try and be better. The idea of being more\u00a0productive or working out every day or meditating every morning doesn’t last,\u00a0just because December 31st becomes January 1st. When you resolve to change yourself, a week later everything goes back to the way it was. I want to stop trying to manipulate myself. It\u2019s useless. All I want to do is be kind, wait for what\u2019s next and and go through it with as much grace as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
A huge wave suddenly thundered\u00a0against the shore, soaking our feet. We both laughed. \u201cSee what I mean?\u201d I\u00a0said. \u201cWe didn’t see that coming, we didn’t choose it, we didn’t try to\u00a0manifest it, but we can choose to laugh about it or grouse that our feet are\u00a0wet.\u201d<\/p>\n
The tides never take a rest. They\u00a0were here before we were born and they will still be here when we are gone. They\u00a0demonstrate that nothing stands still. Everything is always in process. Like\u00a0Bob Dylan says, \u201cIf you\u2019re not busy being born, you\u2019re busy dying.\u201d We get
older every year whether we like it or not but we can also get wiser if we\u00a0focus our attention in the right direction. If we stop trying to swim against\u00a0the tides, we can learn from what\u2019s there and avoid unnecessary suffering. Everything\u00a0happens in its own time: The light and the darkness. Waking and sleeping. Our\u00a0birth and our death. All we can do is prepare for change and try not to resist\u00a0it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pema Chodron talks about\u00a0\u201cgroundlessness.\u201d It’s about experiencing change, feeling like the earth\u00a0beneath your feet is shifting, wanting to resist and then learning to relax\u00a0into it. She adds, \u201cTo be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to
be continually thrown out of the nest.\u201d<\/p>\n
So go the tides that are always and\u00a0forever moving in and out in the ebb and flow of life. \u00a0The work is to feel our feelings, be kind to ourselves and find a way to become one with the never ending motion of existence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was invited to spend New Year\u2019s\u00a0Day with a group of friends at a home on the beach in Malibu. I hadn\u2019t dug my\u00a0feet into the sand for a very long time and it felt great to take a sunset walk\u00a0beside the ocean. We passed a large scattering of dark rocks that hadn’t beenthere the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2437"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2438,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437\/revisions\/2438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}