The Ocean

I was going through old writings and came across this essay from July of 2015. It still resonates, particularly in the current climate. Love and kindness are always the way to win.

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In my last year of college, I began regularly walking along the beach. I was blessed to live in Isla Vista where I was 10 seconds away from having my feet in the ocean from any given location. Watching and listening to the crash of waves has always been a pleasurable experience, but during my last year at UCSB, the waves began to represent an idea that I hold very near to my heart.

I am always humbled after a walk on the beach because I seem to be more centered on what is important in my life and more mindful about the world around me. During my college career I struggled with not having complete self-control over my smoking habits, and walking along the beach was a way for me to gain control of my life again. It always seemed to bring me back down to earth and help me realize my true desires. In my last year, I began to discover more about where my passions lie; I have always been very empathetic and eager to help others, but I never did much to put those passions to action. Walking on the beach allows me to focus on how I can channel my abilities to most effectively create the change I desire to see in the world.

I’m a routine kind of guy and I always had the same routine for my walks on the beach. An app would tell me if the tide was low enough to access the beach from the stairs across the street, and when it was low enough I would load a podcast and start my walk. Sometimes I’d walk a long way and sometimes not, but I would always end up at the same washed-up log. I’d sit, turn the podcast off, and just listen and watch. Sometimes I’d watch for hours, and sometimes five minutes.

The idea that resonates so strongly with me is that even when I leave my spot on that stump and walk back home, and even when I cannot hear the roar of the waves, they are still doing what they do: constantly morphing the land they crash against. Never ceasing, never stopping, and at times they may be calm but they always get back up to their most powerful.

I was shown a picture of Isla Vista that was taken in the early seventies, and it shocked me to see the landscape was completely different than the one I was walking on and living in. The houses that now had backyards with sheer cliffs once had large green backyards. When I sit on my stump and watch the ocean, I am not consciously aware of the fact that these waves are always working towards changing the landscape they come against. Although I may not see the changes while sitting there, when I come back to that stump in thirty years I will look upon an entirely different landscape. The ocean and its waves are much like society.

I have always struggled with the thought that I may never see the change in the world that I want to create, but that is because I am one wave crashing against the landscape in front of me. Just as the waves have no choice in whether they want to change the landscape, I have come to believe that people have no choice in whether they leave a mark on this world. We are always affecting the people around us, and there is no way to tell the rippling effects our actions will have. I wish to believe that all of us generally wake up with the desire to add value to the world and to know that we have worth and meaning, which fuels an inclination to make the world a better place for the generations to come. It’s not something we have the ability to escape from just as the waves do not have the ability to turn around before they crash down.

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Every time I walk by or see the ocean I am reminded that there are thousands of individuals out there who are making the world a better place every single day. One person can’t make a difference just as one wave cannot be responsible for bringing down a cliff. It takes time and thousands of waves. To change the world it takes time and thousands of individuals. When I start to lose hope the world will change its current course before irreversible damage is done to the planet or we destroy ourselves, I am sent a reminder that all we can do is our best at being kind and making the world a better place. Every time I lose hope, I seem to stumble upon an ocean. A big ocean that is full of waves coming towards me. Every time I lose hope, I seem to stumble on someone working on new breakthroughs involving biofuel or someone working to build sustainable communities or simply a person giving food to another on the street. When we do even the smallest of kind actions we become a part of a succession of individuals that are breaking down the current landscape to create a new and better world. It may not be in my lifetime that the cliff falls and the world has become a better place, but I am content knowing that I am one of the thousands of waves on its way.