Between the Sand and the Foam

"I am forever walking upon these shores,
betwixt the sand and the foam.
The high tide will erase my foot-prints,
And the wind will blow away the foam.
But the sea and the shore will remain
Forever." Kahlil Gibran

I was thinking of this poem while sitting in the sand at the beach yesterday. With 80 degree weather it was like summer. I thought "between the sand and the foam." I looked. There was nothing between the sand and the foam. The sand and the foam is where the ocean meets the land.

What does it mean to be somewhere that can only be two dimensional, not three? What did Gibran want to convey by saying he was walking between the sand and the foam? As I watched the dance I began to see that the foam was always moving and the sand was at rest. Ah, the play of being and doing once again.

Was the poet's life lived in that non-space between doing and being? Was he trying to say that his place was a delicate balance between doing and being? I think he was. The best of lives are lived with a wise blend of activity and stillness, work and play, wakefulness and sleep.

And as for our doing and being, the tide of life will wash away what we do and the winds of change will blow away even our spiritual achievements. But...the sea and the shore, love, God, the universal intelligence that guides the stars, remains.

Boring Can Be Good

Suppose you got to a point where you had eaten enough ice cream that the idea of eating it didn't interest you all that much any more. Substitute any other food, or all food for that matter. Suppose you got to a point where all movies seemed to be remakes of others that you had already seen. Movies stopped being entertaining. Substitute any other form of entertainment.

Suppose your job stopped being interesting, or topics of conversation, or everything in your life was nice, but since you had done it all, said it all, seen it all, so many times before...suppose you just got...bored. Is that a bad thing?

I was thinking about that. Sometimes my life is boring. At times I feel like what else is there to do. Moments, maybe even for the better part of a day. You'd think that would be a good enough reason to get depressed.

Sitting on the floor on Easter Sunday I was thinking that being bored with life could be a good place to explore another dimension of...life, reality, existence. If we are in essence infinite, it would make sense that the finite world we live in would eventually become tiring, less entertaining. Maybe instead of becoming depressed, if one were to become aware, at a time like this, one could discover new...life.

Suppose you found yourself bored with life or simply feeling like you've "been there, done that." But instead sinking into self-pity or becoming miserable you looked at this as an opportunity. Since regular life has become less attractive, less demanding of your attention, maybe instead of becoming depressed, you looked deeper into things, beyond the day to day living. If you could stay present and not make judgments about how life should be and just be with the...boredom, maybe there is something else that life wants to show you.

Anyway, that's what I'm thinking. Not that I don't have enough to keep me busy, but, maybe if what is out there that does keep me busy becomes less interesting, maybe I will dig a little deeper. Maybe I will listen a little closer to the silence that I know keeps calling me.

When life begins to suck, that is not the time to complain. I think that's the time to listen. When life sucks it's actually helping you to listen, or at least trying to get your attention.