Riding the waves
Lessons from the ocean on trust and presence
One of my favorite things to do in this world is boogie-boarding. It is scary and exhilarating to feel the power of the ocean. Surfing is fun, too, but it is more work and there is something for me about the ease of being on my belly flush with the roaring waves close to shore. I love looking to my sides as I am riding in and seeing the spray all around me. I am in the chaos and I am above the chaos. I am fully in the moment, experiencing joy, feeling alive.
Each wave is different. Some are smooth and deposit me gently on the beach and some laugh at me, rolling me over until I don’t know which way is up. Waves are like change, sometimes smooth and barely perceptible until one day you look back and realize something is different. Other times, change arrives tumbling and breaking, rearranging everything in its path and you end up with sand in your suit and water up your nose.
What waves have taught me about change is that clinging doesn’t serve me. Whether riding a smooth wave or getting tossed in the surf, trusting in the process always produces a better outcome than bracing and fighting against the flow. There is something freeing about letting go and looking around with fresh eyes at what is actually here, what is actually possible. Nothing stays the same. It is simply the condition of being alive. Change is, in fact, the only constant of life, as infinite as the roll of the waves on the ocean surface.
Recently, an old friend I have had the good fortune of reconnecting with almost forty years later dug up photos from our high school prom and other teenage shenanigans. It is me in the photos, but I don’t viscerally remember being in her skin. I am sure my essence is the same, but that girl lived a different life than I do now.
There was so much change on the horizon for her in that life that felt steady and rather predictable. How would she know that she would end up moving to the other side of the country? That she would raise incredible children into adult humans? That people would come and go, leaving little or huge lasting impacts? That she would struggle and thrive? That she would write a book about holistic wellness based on everything she learned over the course of her life so far? Looking at those photos is disorienting in a good way, like meeting a stranger who shares my eyes. The influences and circumstances of my life are different, but something underneath is unchanged. She was me and I am me and I will be me. Wave after wave after wave.
That girl in the prom dress didn’t plan the life I have now. The waves took me in directions I never could have anticipated. And the most important thing I have learned, the thing I have had to learn over and over again, is to trust my own instincts even when the water is murky and I can’t see the bottom.
I remember when my children were small and I brought some worry to our pediatrician, one of my many concerns that fell under the heading: “Am I doing this right??” Instead of dismissing it or handing me a pamphlet, he looked at me and asked, “Well, what do you think?” Then he listened. And then he said something that encouraged me to keep trusting my mothering instinct, that I would find my way. It was such a simple thing. But what he gave me in that moment was permission to trust that the answer I was looking for was already inside me and in the relationship I was building with my children.
The unfolding of life requires that kind of trust, not passive, not blind, but active and attentive. It requires the willingness to give our full attention to life as it is. To observe, to ask questions, to embrace the power of the only thing we can truly change: our minds, our attitudes and perspectives. Everything flows from there, respecting the energy of the waves but knowing, believing, that we can ride them.
And yet the voices of modern life work hard to drown that trust out. They don’t announce themselves as hostile. They just whisper, persistently, that you need to be a certain way to be enough. That everyone needs to be fixed and molded and making an impression. Everything is so curated, so shaped for an audience, so relentlessly optimized. It is exhausting. And it pulls us away from the most beautiful thing I know, the feeling of being in the presence of someone who is genuinely themselves, not managing how they are perceived, just present. You know it when you feel it. There is a quality of aliveness in being with people who are genuinely present.
When I am feeling at home and present in my own body and mind, it feels calm. Like wind and birdsong in the trees and a well-worn trail beneath my feet, shared by so many others before me. I feel it when I read and someone else’s voice suddenly says something that I needed to hear. I feel it when I write and the words flow from my pen without effort or performance or anyone watching. I feel it when I am fully in the wave, not bracing, not fighting, just riding.
Each wave is different. Each wave is also the ocean.
Take a moment for yourself:
Find a comfortable seat and close your eyes. Take three slow breaths and let the noise of the day settle. Keep breathing and imagine yourself sinking into your seat, feeling gravity holding you safely in place. Ask yourself gently: where in my life do I feel most like myself and genuinely present? Where do I feel alive and joyful? Sit with whatever arises. Then open your journal and write without stopping for five minutes. Let the words come without editing. Let her speak. The faster you write, in fact, the more you bypass your analytical mind and access the voice of your soul that is connected to all life. That voice is the ocean, not just the wave.
I am a holistic wellness coach. I don't see you as a problem to be solved. You are already fully worthy of love and care. My work is not about fixing people. It is about helping them remember what they already know about themselves, clearing away enough noise to hear their own voice again, and creating habits that care for the whole person - body, mind, and spirit. If you would like to explore working with me, please visit my website. I offer free consultation calls to see if I am a good fit for you.
Beautifully written!
Ride the wave 🔥