Ebb tide

I glance anxiously over the crest of the waves. The images of my past appear before me, the people I have known, the places I have been, the sorrow of what once was and can never be again.

(…) Loss, waste, regret, sorrow, pain – these are the judgments of a man, not the concerns of a child. When I wandered the beach as a youth, I did not pass sentence on every step I took, every turn I made, every treasure I found. I accepted the events of my life, embraced them for what they were, what they are. I welcomed the unexpected, held fast to the unknown, moved in sympathy with the wind and rain. Only after I was grown did I try to give a name – life, death, good, evil, joy, sorrow, to the occurrences that mark my journey through this world.

The events of my life are like the rolling of the waves, the changing of the tide, the shifting of the wind – they contain no judgement. My parent’s death was not a tragedy, my marriage not a mistake, my career not a miscalculation. They were the course of my days, the pattern of my years, the flow of the life that was given to me, and the way I lived it.