Castles in the sand…

This week I visited the South of the island and took a walk along its linked and seemingly-endless stretch of golden, sandy beaches.

I set off with the intention of exploring a little, walking to a ‘Spit’ of land I could see in the distance and then returning to my starting point to sit and soak up some sunshine before heading back home. But, like most of Life, the initial plan was only the starting point and the real meaning behind it was hidden in what I encountered and experienced along the way:

• Little rocky outcrops to pick my way over, draped in various shades of luminous green and studded with gem-like limpets and comical, scurrying crabs.
• A gentle surf-line of ebbing tide that whispered “Surrender your naked feet to my tender touch and cooling flow”; a Siren’s song that I was happy to be seduced by.
• A fortress-line of tiny sand castles being skilfully constructed by an army of tiny hands; each strategically dotted along the length of the beach. None within sight of each other, but all driven by the same tiny human need to design and construct something visible, something tangible on the endlessly-shifting sands.
• Long, expanding rivulets of incoming tidal water that temporarily blocked my path, each one offering me the choice: ‘Wade in and get your feet wet or make a cautious, drier detour and take the long way round’.

And so the walk went on…and on.

Hotels, surf schools, sun loungers and parasols came and went, slowly retreating into the distance, as mountains, desert plains and endless ocean and sand lay waiting for me, invitingly, up ahead. Constant desert landscape to my right, vibrant, dancing ocean to my left and only beach, and more beach, the pathway in between.

It was the sort of moment where philosophical thoughts begin to form and so they did…slowly and comically at first:

“Life’s a beach and then you die…”

But then “I’ll have to let go of my original plan soon, walking out to the Spit of land, and consider heading back. I suppose I’ve failed in my objective for the day.”

“How human”, my inner voice said, “to focus on the failed objective and not the joy of the little things that surfaced in its place”.

As I retraced my steps I thought more about this, how the feeling of failure is always linked to comparison and to somehow falling short. Comparison with our original plans; comparison with other people; comparison with unrealistic standards or ideals of perfection, in behaviour, in selflessness, in appearance or in measures of achievement. And I thought about how we continually dampen our spirits and dull our inner light each time we choose to take this ‘thinking path of comparison’.

I looked out at the sunlight glistening magically on the moving water. I looked out at the solid horizon of mountains silhouetted in the distance and I felt the spirit of peace that they both convey, in their own unique way. One, a dancing, vibrant, life-filled kind of peace. The other, a calm, solid, silent kind of peace. And I thought “Failure is just a meaningless human construct. Comparison is just a human and limited way of thinking, living and being, hard-wired into us through generations of conditioning and a daily ritual of repetition.

Neither of them has anything to do with this all-consuming Spirit of Life that I can feel all around me and, fleetingly, within me too. Neither of them has anything to do with finding, creating or cultivating peace within, or with sharing that inner peace with others in any way.

This can only be done by accepting our ‘imperfections’. This can only be done by sighing and smiling at our human need to continually judge, ourselves and others, and then by letting all feelings of ‘failure’ around those judgements drift away on the wind and the tide of each new day.

Our whole lives are really just a life-long lesson, in learning how to let the liquid tide of dancing light sweep into us, and wash away the ‘sand-castles’ that we build around us and the walls of who we think we need to be. Then walking on, with gratitude and curiosity, to discover what lies waiting for us on the seemingly endless and unfolding beach of Life ahead…