The nature of the sea …

Sunset, Exmouth Gulf, Exmouth, Western Australia

When I’m by the sea I often reflect on relationships.  Is there such a thing as forever?  Or is there more to be enjoyed in those fleeting moments of visitation, like those experienced by the tides’ ebb and flow?

The picture jogged my memory about what Anne Morrow Lindberg wrote …

“When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment.  It is an impossibility.  It is even a lie to pretend to.  And yet this is exactly what most of us demand.  We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships.  We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb.  We are afraid it will never return.  We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even.  Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what was in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread of anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now.  Relationships must be like islands, one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits – islands, surrounded and interrupted by the seas, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.”  Anne Morrow Lindberg, Gift from the Sea (www.goodreads.com).

One day I will find someone who understands, fully understands, and embraces this philosophy.

Until next time

As always

a dawn bird