Life sometimes feels like standing in the ocean on a day the waves are crashing in. One minute you're standing in waist deep water, the next you're pummeled by a wave and in over your head without even the slightest move. Panic drives deep in the soul of a man overwhelmed by a world that shows no mercy. There is no consequence quite so difficult as the natural outworking of an attempt to do the right thing the wrong way. Nor perhaps so dire the consequences of trying to do the wrong thing in such a way as to appear to be the right. It seems like that place in the waves where you're pushed to shore by those incoming, yet sucked out to sea by the same rush moving back out in the undertow. It's the place you don't want to lose your balance, because the recovery can seem like a hopeless endeavor.
It seems as though the past is crushing me against the shore, while the future sucks me further into the cycle of defeat and misery I'm already so familiar with. If it were easy to get out of the cycles of life, I guess they wouldn't be cycles in the first place. The most troubling part of the whole scenario is the fact that in this place, it is hard to decide whether I desire the safety of the shore, or the adventure of the deep. In either case, I know I find some shelter from the power of the waters smashing me against an already familiar shore. Ironically, no matter how far into the deep I actually make it, life seems to always have this familiar dynamic of a past tempting me to return to its "ease," along with a future alluring me to its "promise;" having the superfluous effect of a perceived stagnation. So here I am, fighting for a future, which every inch I get closer to, puts me not a single inch further away from my past; the memories of which seem no further away than the last time they tried to push me back to their safety.
In the rearview mirror, I see only the latest obstacle to have come up, yet the memories of miles traveled tell me it's all been a winding and challenging journey. The past was never safe, and its challenges were never easy. So why does going back seem like such an escape? What is so comfortable about a shore I never sat safely upon? Haven't I always been stuck in this toil between past and future we call the present? And looking to the future, a future I'll probably always be chasing until the day I breathe my last, am I simply reaching for an adventure I'll never touch? Silly I even have to ask, as the next wave of future comes along to knock me back to the past I've just found the strength to give up pining for. So it goes, over and over and over again, knocked between remembering an undesirable past, and an unknown and perhaps undesirable future.
So I guess like Solomon, I can't help but cry "meaningless, it's all meaningless, like a chasing after the wind." Or perhaps I could say life is just the diachronic expression "a time to be born, a time to die." Maybe the shore is only that unfamiliar state preexistent, and the future is whatever comes when the past and future give up on knocking me around, and all that remains is a right now that isn't even a right now because there was no before or after, but just an......is. So maybe the moment I'm done toiling for the future is the moment the present ceases to exist. Or maybe the point at which I reach the peaceful future is no desirable point at all.....what is there to be gained in the deep? And what to be lost?
So what am I fighting for if not for the future or the past? Perhaps the toil is not to move to one or the other, but simply to stay in the waves. Perhaps the past must not be feigned, and the future is never meant to be reached. Perhaps the joy and simplicity of the ride must be accepted, if not desired. Perhaps today really does have enough worries of its own. Funny how no matter how hard I try, I can't make the next moment come any faster. Yet, the harder I try, I know I can make this moment more enjoyable for my efforts. Maybe a leap of faith isn't about the future at all, but just jumping into and with the wave of what comes next, right now. I guess what I'm seeing is that the adventure isn't for the future, but in moving with the present, and recognizing the adventure of this moment.
I will make the most of this moment, for this moment is all I have. I will cherish and make the most of today. Well, I'll try, these waters are pretty rough.
