“You don’t want, you don’t wait, you don’t love, but you don’t hate, you just roll over me and you pull me in.”

I don’t usually quote old Jack Johnson songs, but it’s high tide, I mean time, for some ocean appreciation.

I love the ocean like a close family member, like a god that seeps into every cell of my body, every atom to love and listen. The sea gives me a kind of clarity and peace I cannot find anywhere else. So often in science and literature the ocean is a teeming source of life. As I soak up my two beach days for the year, I realize that this idea resonates with me in a strangely spiritual way. Everything I really need to know about life I can find in the ocean.

Shore

When I was a little girl, the ocean felt like a mother. It always washed me gently, but splashed me just enough to keep me from going in too deep. The tides showed me the beauty of consistency, and that nothing lasts forever. When the storms came, they were dangerous and destructive with a purpose.

After the waves beat the shores with lethal force, the sand would be littered with treasures from the deep. There would be the teeth of beasts, softened by pressure and time, or the old homes of tiny animals, evidence of life. From this I learned that even the most ruthless forces of nature can give as much as they take.

Waves

I have always been a bit wimpy and afraid of the dark, even dark water. The ocean, unlike most people, can pull me away from some of my fears. Somehow, being dragged across the ocean floor by the undertow makes me feel brave. Mostly I roll through the waves, reminded that I do not have to be in control of everything to thrive. I have been tossed around, body slammed, and generally beat up by rough seas before. Miraculously, I emerged every time scraped, sandy, and salty but alive.

Outside the rhythmic underwater roar of the ocean is chaos and millions of ways to fail and disappoint everyone. When contending with the waves, all we must do is keep breathing. We breathe and do not sink, and that is enough for the sea.

Depths

The ocean, which we know less about than parts of outer space, is a constant reminder that no one is ever done learning. It teaches us that we do not have to fully understand something to love it. This enigmatic form can cradle one minute and destroy the next.

Salt water heals more than physical wounds. In it we can find just a bit of our essence. The sea has absorbed every tear, every wish, every memory anyone has ever put into it. Within the ancient depths that have witnessed it all, there are always answers. Listen.