There’s no doubt about it, water brings tranquillity. Just looking at it, the uniform placidity of a lake or the rhythmn rolling waves of the ocean is enough to calm you down. Immersing yourself in a cool lake on hot day washes all your discomfort and anxiety away in an instant. When the clouds finally break on a stifling, muggy day the relief in the air is tangible.
On the Beach
Sitting at the beach just now I was struck by this thought: the reason it brings tranquillity is because it’s constant, unchanging. Despite the developments around it and the high powered boats moving around (and moored just outside the swimming area, converting the area near shore into an aquatic parking lot), the long view of the lake is the same as it was in the time of the Caesars. No one has ever plowed the surface, or built a building, or a highway, on the lake.
And the things that people do at the beach are pretty much the same things we did at the beach when I was a kid – sand castles, ice cream and jumping off the dock are steady and dependable parts of our culture.
The beach here is covered with tiny little shells. Each shell was once a living creature, trying to get through life as best as it knew how, consuming the nutrients available in its watery environment and hoping not to get eaten, reproducing and leaving another generation of tiny shelled creatures to carry on, thousands, maybe millions of generations of these little rapscallions and their shells, their spent bodies, make up a beach.
Human beings are lucky. We will also leave behind us photographs (we will be immortal on facebook), people who actually remember us as individuals, by name (something no oyster ever had) and, if we are lucky and have lived our lives well, a world which is a bit better than the one we were born into.
Hopefully, though, the water will be the same.
www.gurukalehuru.com 