Siren
Standing in the doorway of our rented cottage on the Oregon coast, I am overwhelmed by the profound peace and melancholy that strikes me as I look out over the water. The sound of the waves both heals me, and yet calls from my soul a timeless sadness.
In trying to understand why this is so, I am forced to focus on the nature of what would seem to me to be eternal, and the fleeting moment that is my life in comparison to this backdrop.
For although each wave is a new movement, the movement of the waves has been going on for longer than I can emotionally experience.
It’s kind of a bleak evening. The rain clouds overhead are bringing relief from the smoke that has polluted the air for the past month or so. Each drop of rain washing the air clean, and hopefully helping to quench combustion’s endless desire for more chaos, more fuel, more destruction.
Yet those clouds that bring hope also blot out the sun, leaving us with a grey solitude that seems to mock the beauty that I know can be found here.
Which invites me to focus on time, and its passing.
Because in this little corner of the world there is a sense of the never ending permanence of now within the wind and the waves. They’ve been at this dance for so long that to them I must appear an insignificant existence, a spark present only for a moment.
Without reference to us as a species, or as a collective, the elements take the next step in their timeless dance of movement and flow, magical and seemingly infinite.
And yet against the backdrop of the universe, even the waves seem to be but a moment, just a flicker, and then gone.
As someone who recently had a milestone birthday, the reality of time seems stronger than ever right now. In the years I’ve been circling our local star on this planet, locked to it by a gravity that I cannot explain but can nevertheless experience, I have travelled through more space than I can ever understand.
For me, for us, there is no reference that we can cling to that will give us a sense of the vastness of space, nor the true and transformative nature of time.
But in the song of the waves, I feel like I am listening to the heartbeat of the universe.
Each beat, each breath, each moment is ever becoming and fading in an endless cycle of creation and destruction, of life and of death. The siren call of the waves brings forth from my soul the recognition that time as I know is gifted and granted, a blessing bequeathed by a universe that does not give it lightly, nor without intention.
For nothing cannot come from something, unless there never was a nothing to begin with.
All I know is that the song of the waves are calling me to use the time given and remaining wisely, with wisdom, kindness and intention.
To do anything less would be to squander and belittle the incredible gift of life which I have been given.
And which I have not appreciated as often, nor as thoroughly, as I should.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings