I am weightless, twisting and tumbling under waves rising like poetry from the throat of the Atlantic. The chilly water rushes electrically over my skin as I kick further out. Surfacing for air, I taste a rich, metallic salinity, minerals surging up from the crust of the Earth far below, bits of sand washed in from the opposite coast thousands of miles away. “You’re crazy!” my friends laugh back on the shore, and I dive headlong into another roaring hill of turquoise water, a tiny speck in the wild, blue abyss.
We humans all crave communion with something larger than ourselves. No matter what our theology or lack thereof, none can stand for long to serve as the center of her or his own universe.
There are two ways of feeling small; both are paradoxes. The first occurs when we allow fear to erode our true sense of self and look at the outside world only as a threat. We stubbornly fix ourselves as the focus of our own existence and seek to coerce everything else in our lives into revolving around us, feeling more and more lost and powerless when things do not go “according to plan.” As focus on ourselves grows, we feel as if we are disappearing. We become paralyzed.
The second occurs when we step aside and allow ourselves to stand in awe of our powerlessness in comparison to the outside world. When we let go of control and recognize the beauty in our own relative insignificance, we no longer fear feeling small. We find our true power when we learn to live life as a dance with the danger all around us, to embrace the risk, to jump into the cold ocean, to trust others, to give without expecting anything in return.
I am learning this second way of feeling small. For years, I was stuck in the first like a bad habit. Focusing so much on myself, I feared my insignificance and tried futilely time and again to prove myself. I neglected relationships to focus on academic achievement. I externalized my anxiety via an eating disorder, physically shrinking yet occupying more and more space in my mental universe. The more I accomplished, the less safe I felt; something inside me knew how easily these things could be washed away. Report cards and calorie counts aren’t what we are designed to live for.
We are designed for relationships. We will forever feel empty until we learn to simply love others rather than attempting to prove ourselves to them. In friendship, we realize our own strengths and weaknesses and, most importantly, learn to appreciate difference. When we look outward, we find that we can celebrate others’ beauty without feeling compelled to compete with it.
We are designed for adventure, to run with the sand flying under our feet, to chase the waves, to stand in their chaos and sometimes to fall under their force. We are taught that we should be in control, to make the “safe” choice, to compare brands, to incessantly manicure our lives and weed out what no longer “serves” us. We cocoon in social media, filtering out what we don’t want to see and fooling ourselves into believing that the outside world should be as accommodating as our Instagram feed.
We forget that fear can be a beautiful thing, and the more we run from it the faster it chases us until we cringe at anything unpredictable. When we turn and run into the unknown, however, we find that our smallness can be a strength. It allows us to appreciate the grandeur of all else and to remember that some greater force indeed rules over us. We find relief in the reminder that we were never intended to anchor the universe.
A few nights ago, I sat with friends at a beachside restaurant. The sun had just slipped below the waves, and the sky was fading from orange to a deep amethyst. “The ocean is kind of scary at night.” one commented, gazing out over the dark water.
“It’s so big,” I agreed, “but that’s what I love about it.”
“True.” she said, “It’s like… a beautiful danger.”
True, and isn’t anything beautiful a little bit dangerous? Hope, love, faith? A Spring Break trip with three friends and zero plans? When we allow ourselves to face the unknown, we realize how deeply we crave it. Tumbling beneath the waves, we find just how good it can be to feel small.
