Sometimes Life Is Good

By Tommy Butler, 2014-06-17

 

Sometimes life is good. Sometimes life is bad. When I think of what could illustrate this truth,
I picture the sea, with the rise and fall of its waves.

Since time immemorial they have been rising and falling. Rushing up the near or distant shores, and then back down again. And again. And again.

Then there are the tides...also rising and receding forever. They last for periods of time even longer than the small advances and retreats of the waves.

So I would persuade you that the water is a representation of our circumstances, the state of a human life or a family. Contemplate how easily the waves rise and fall: Fleeting, precious moments of happiness or pain. Each one unique; that moment will never happen again. Remember these, and treasure them.

Next let the high tides betoken times of plenty when our lives are full and fortune smiles on us. We need to remember to cherish these times while they last, and even use them to prepare for the times that we know will inevitably follow-- the low tides, the times of scarcity.

But what of landings? In their great journey the world over, the waters of the sea will also kiss the land. You never know when. Life's waves will roll us up onto soft sandy beaches, like a spring wedding for two lovers along the warm shore. Could bliss be more pure?

Or the waves can just as well dash us against the rocks in a fierce winter storm, innumerable tons of indiscriminate, unforgiving power beating us against us in the black of night. Relentlessly. Repeatedly against the stone. Grinding rock to sand.

Blessed, peaceful, perfect victory. Cursed, despairing, uncaring tragedy. Both or either can happen more than once in a lifetime. It is devastating. And then it is glorious.

These incalculable and unavoidable landings--life events--form the defining moments of our existence. In these, we are forced to decide what we are made of. We prove weak or powerful; we show ourselves foolish or wise; we become monstrous or we grow more merciful.

Oh then, why must there be rocks? Why can't we on all days land on the a pristine white shore of some lost beach in yet uncharted waters of Capricorn's tropic?

Might I suggest that were it not so, the sea would not be so beautifully perfect? Ageless, truer-than-time, its waters and their motives ever abiding: an indisputable product of both the painful and the delightsome. Never forget that without the rocks, there could never be sand.

So too the affairs of humankind. The Waves, the Tides, and the Landings.