A friend said that holidays could soften people's stubborn stance, but it could also harden it more.
I am sitting in front of the open sea. Periodically, the waves would swell up and, as if patiently, holds for a moment to display its awesome wall of water with all the dredge that is collected, and, inevitably, blasts forward against the timeless boulders. The sea and the land, in that constant dance that causes changes too slow for us to see.
Sometimes, we humans, make changes that are too slow too, and sometimes they may not happen beyond our own lifetimes.
The sea is different from the mountains, however majestic the latter can be. The sea connects to all your senses. Its face can be beautiful and romantic, or frightening and angry, or something else. Its scent changes according to the events that shape its hidden abyss. Its salty skin is warm and cold, embracing but also murderous. And the sea tastes like our blood and like the lives that dwell in it. The metaphor of the sea cannot be exhausted. But here, I sit before the sea, and I wonder at its carelessness, its stubbornness. Adamantly pounding the boulders. But I am not as adamant. And I wonder if she is as adamant, but certainly more than me.
The sea can't escape my attention. No matter how much I think about other things, no matter how my mind drifts in thoughts that they themselves are searching for my own heart barricaded by the seawall of my fears, no matter how violent the dynamism of my own abyss is experiencing, the sea is always getting some of my attention, with its ability to tug at my senses. And I would not drift too far before I focus on the sea again. Maybe that's why I come to the sea.
The wind is picking up, blowing golden sand into the turquoise water. It's strange that there's so much sand right next to so much dark, volcanic rock. But that's because this beach is artificial, with sand transported across the strait from the Sahara. And what I did today might feel a little artificial too, transporting my good will squeezed through the cracks of that seawall from my heart. Perhaps it's better to let things go the way they want and not make any effort. The sea doesn't always batter the charcoal-like rocks. It does this periodically, but most of the time it's only caressing it. No one is pushing the water against the rocks.
But I am not the sea and no one is a rock. I mustered the courage to attempt to build a bridge over a two-year old chasm in a friendship that has been left dry. But when she saw my face, for the first time since the schism, her face was passionless like the rocks, not even noticing the battering by time, and all she could tell me was that she didn't want to see me. But there was no violent storm in me, no shattered mountains, no noise of any kind, not even the shrill of a seagull losing its scrap of food. I just smiled and thanked her for her time and let her push me out.
The coast is mostly shaped by the persistent emerald waves that can paint itself in infinite patterns. But I am not shaping anyone's thoughts here, let alone their lives. I am just sitting here on a big boulder atop the ones below being battered. I see that as the sun slowly makes its way down towards the horizon, little black and red crab start to appear on the rocks below, exactly where the periodically violent waves come crashing in. They feel at ease with the tsunami of salt water, much more than if I or any other creature come close. I don't know what they are doing there now. Eating scraps of algae on the rocks? They are just being part of the change, though they are the moving parts, consciously moving parts. And I wonder if I can just be part of this whole system without worrying too much about changes, about chasms to bridge, and just admire the beauty of the sea, its artistic arms that shape the land over time. And I close my eyes and oversea the calming of the shouting and worries in my inner abyss.
