I Am A Shell

There’s something especially and most delightfully magnetizing about the shoreline in the winter months. The ominous clouds billow as if they are trying to speak volumes, yet can’t quite seem to utter the right words. Instead they sit quiet. They sit back and watch as life unfolds moment by moment.

The birds take off and fade into the sky, slowly drifting away and out of sight. As you glance up at the abyss above, mother wind gathers bits of sand, blows them into something of a flurry and brushes them ever so subtly onto your face. These pieces will rest here until you wipe them out of your eyes, pick them from your hair and bite down on them between your teeth, one by one.

The shells have gathered in a snakelike formation at the exact point where the tide will rise and meet them again, sweeping them back home for the night in a sudden rush. Each and every single shell has its own story with a past, present and future. It has been through cycles and will go through these cycles again, and again, and again. It has survived being buried, unearthed, bashed, battered and buried only to be unearthed once more and begin the process again. It has seen the darkest depths of the sea and it has seen the light of the sun. It has been scraped, bruised and chipped along the way, sometimes even broken. It falls into different hands along the way, with each turn in its journey. Some hands hold onto it tightly, some simply gaze at its patterns only for a time, some throw it back into the sea immediately.

The sand squeaks beneath your feet and you lightly giggle. The sand squeaks between your toes in such a way that makes you declare that you’ve never heard it squeak like that before. Here in the winter the footprints of those before you become more sporadic and more difficult to follow. Here you could walk for miles and miles slowly lifting one foot in front of the other without crossing paths with lines on another face.

Here you are reminded that while you may have created the world that lives in your head, you certainly did not create this one. This world is far more majestic than yours, far more defined. Here you are reminded to be still and know this present moment is all you are faced with. Great sorrow has come before this moment, just as there has been great joy. The same will come for the moments to follow this one, and the moments after that. Right now you will have none of that. Right now you will have only this moment that you have been granted, recognizing that this moment will never exist again. This moment is yours and is yours for the taking. You take this moment and somehow this becomes enough.

This moment is enough.