One of my favorite things to do, which I unfortunately don’t get to do anymore, is to sit on the beach and watch the waves crash endlessly against the shore. A hard fought battle that has raged long before any of us were born and will continue to rage long after we are gone. This slow, methodical, and relentless assault is mesmerizing to me in contrast to this fast, busied, and fleeting lifestyle we humans have created for ourselves.
I wonder if the waves and grains of the sand view us like we view humming birds. These deftly flying birds that float whimsically through the air beating their wings at around 60 beats per second and live for a span of simply 5 years. Or what about the monarch butterfly which only lives two to six weeks? A month’s time to live out a life here. A blip in the memory of these waves; a small but brilliantly spark to these grains of sand.
Death and taxes are the two guaranteed things in a human’s life but I would add that one can never escape change. It’s all around us, affecting our lives whether we are privy to it or not. It’s in the very building blocks of creation, entropy, the gradual decay of order into chaos. The waves break down the sandy bluffs. No matter how strong they seem, they will still always erode. The waves themselves, these agents of entropy, will eventually cease as the oceans go still and even the oceans and the Earth as a whole will eventually dissipate.
Yet we progress forward in our short lives constructing order out of chaos with great fervor. Order that will all eventually be consumed by these waves crashing against this earthen bank. Sitting there face to face with my lovely foe I pensively watch the world go by through the peripherals of my soul. In this moment I feel above and apart, a lost sailor at the mercy of the waves. Watching others flicker in and out. Seeing their accolades rot and erode in this stormy breach, I search for what it is all worth.
Yet, while I breathe I will build my monuments. I will ride the faces of these crashing waves, using your destructive and chaotic power for a brief moment of order. All the while knowing that when I am gone you will wipe away all my monuments, all my accomplishments. That all my establishments and legacies will churn into foam and be sucked away into the blue oblivion. That all memory of me will one day cease to exist.
Yet today, today dear waves, I still do yet draw breath and with all that I am I will live. For there is beauty in order, beauty in creation, beauty in life. Even if this life is a mere flash of lightning in relativity to the eye of the cosmos it will be the brightest flash that the universe will ever witness. For to live any less is not to live at all.