She sits with her bare toes in the cool, coarse sand. Closing her eyes she breaths in the fresh ocean air. It’s been a very long time since that peace has been felt, the grounding and connection avoided in the speed of life and living in time.
Since childhood it has been part of life, a place to go to regroup, rethink, analyze and just be. Back in the day when a 12 year old girl could just go…and sit. With no interference, no worries, no fear and total clarity that it was what was needed to make it all clear.
37 years have fled by in the speed of a moment since then.
Life gets in the way of self.
It takes over and makes us forget what is important to make this tiny little shred of the bigger picture amazing, we lose in the shuffle what the full experience of living should be.
We forget to look around, and be in the moment we are in. We take the birds and the sky, the wind and the dirt for granted. Living in time, we worry about what has already happened and what is to come, and never really live in what is going on around us right now.
We miss the fact that what is happening, no matter what it is, is supposed to be happening right that moment. Always. Nothing is random, nothing is a coincidence. Everything happens exactly as we need it to.
The little girl has always been there, occasionally remembering the toes in the sand and the feeling of being totally alone and one with the earth. Snippets of that show up in the most desperate moments, when you just don’t understand why something has happened that at the time just doesn’t make any sense.
With any luck we find that peace again, we wake up and realize that maybe we are wasting time and doing everything backwards, and the stories that we have made up in our head to justify what we are feeling instead of just feeling it, is not what we should be doing.
It takes time to relearn to be that little girl, to rid the patterns that over many years have become easier than doing what we really need to do to live a full and amazing life. It is hard work to remember to focus, to be, to appreciate that every single second we get has purpose and is a gift that we should embrace.
Every day, that little girl comes back a little bit more. The wonder, the awe…the enthusiasm of just being here and living this crazy life. Every day something new will blow her mind, that in a different state she would have overlooked.
Stopping, sitting…with your toes in the sand, breathing in the life around you, even just for a moment…whenever you can grab it, changes absolutely everything.
