Riding The Waves

An old wise man once told me, "Life is like the ocean. One wave after another of good bad and everything in between. Its the waves you decide to ride and for how long that makes the difference.". I've come to realize that the decision as to what waves to take are the easiest. By easiest I mean they are often the things forced upon us that we really have very little control over resisting. The pull, the gravity of some waves are often to strong to resist be it out of lack in confidence of a better set on the horizon or the fear of no waves left in our personal oceans. Not wanting to be set a drift in a motionless sea of dread we decide to take what rolls our way and ride it the best we can.

As I get older and look back at some of the waves I've taken and feel the spray of the same old ones I'm still riding I find myself looking around... over the crest of the white capped spray to the following waves rolling and crashing behind. Could the next wave be my wave? If I jump off of this same tired wave, feeling the current below me as it nears the shore offering me less and less an enjoyable ride everyday, will I have the energy to paddle back to the new waves? Have to many of the waves of my life to date waterlogged me to a point of withering defeat?

Paddling back out in to the deep unfamiliar waters seems a scary but exhilarating proposition at this point of my life. Will those watching me from the shore understand my desire for a new ride, for a rebirth of sorts to the person I was and want to be again? If I decide to ditch this current comfortable but unsatisfying wave will I be swallowed up and drug down to the reef below by the next wave? I don't know. The not knowing, the uncertainties of life have always been the things that tied me to the familiar. I'm beginning to adjust my way of thinking. Maybe its because I just celebrated my aging on this planet another year. Maybe its that, after too many years of settling, too many years of watching my life and opportunities pass me by that I need to stop fearing the unknown and embrace the uncertainties of life. I've played the same wave game for long enough. I know every curl before it folds out in front of me. The water on this wave is no longer refreshing to my spirit.

So? What now? I suppose its time to tighten my trunks, plug my nose, find a low spot and head out to deeper waters. Uncertainty be damned. Cowabunga fellow wave riders may our next waves be the ones.

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