I Used to Dance ... Now I Swim

I did dance.  Just for fun.  I would dance around my house whenever I heard a song on the radio or at the end of a movie. (And I'm sure it wasn't pretty.)  In fact, one of my favorite memories is when my daughter was little, and we would dance together, for instance, at the end of a movie. (So many movies I could name here.)  Oh, the silliness.  But how fun.  What happened?

Life.  A change in perspective.  A shift in my essence.  But no longer ... I'm going to dance ... and swim!

Look at me now ...


All it takes is a swim in the Aegean Sea: The Before



 

I remember that girl who used to dance ... a lover of life (an earlier blog), just as I spoke of the symbolic swim in the water (also an earlier blog).  Yes, she is reborn.  She is smiling again ... just because.  Oh, how I like her.




The After

 When I look at where I've been to where I am now, I just need to remember to celebrate the journey.  Each step.  Much like the message in Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea, a memorable essay I read in my high school Humanities course with a phenomenal English teacher Janet Stumpf, one of many who impacted my thinking, I stood with my feet in the water of the North Sea and the Aegean Sea, and I felt contentment.  Reflecting on the beach of each one and breathing in the air, the cool water reminded me I was alive, and the vastness of the view remind me that life is infinite to our own eyes.  (My attempt to be philosophical.)



The North Sea

 Lindbergh says, "Perhaps this is the most important thing for me to take back from beach-living: simply the memory that each cycle of the tide is valid; each cycle of the wave is valid; each cycle of a relationship is valid. And my shells? I can sweep them all into my pocket. They are only there to remind me that the sea recedes and returns eternally." 

(Isn't this what Melville infers in Moby Dick, although a much darker experience?)  A later blog.

I think of the many shells I've collected (literally and figuratively), the many steps I've taken ... I can't wait to collect more!

The steps ...
       The journey ...
              The possibilities ....


The North Sea



The Aegean Sea (with Debi)