New Years Day 2011. I feel like another semi-seismic shift has occured in my awareness today. A kind of adjustment to the way I'm seeing the world around me. It all started when I smelled the ocean. Pretty amazing that our sense of smell can trigger something other than a memory. This morning it led to feeling so totally present and so completely insignificant. So how'd all this come to pass?
A bike ride of course. After getting the morning to sleep in which for me is anything past 7am I eventually suited up and heading out on my 'cross bike. The temp was a delicious 50 degrees and with the snow piled up and melting fast, made it feel like Spring. If only! It has been weeks since my last ride outdoors and it felt good to actually be moving instead of spinning away in my office after work staring at my computer and some inspirational training program. Ahh.
As I made my way towards the town line at Preston Beach the smell of the ocean was deliciously pungent, and very visceral. I took a deep inhale through my nose and felt my lungs slowly fill with this vitalized air. Having lived in this seaside community for the past 14 years I often don't notice my surroundings in such a body centered way. I'm usually wrapped up in my going somewhere and in my truck isolated from the elements. But today on my bicycle I was completely focused on this sensation coming in to me in the form of the ocean smell. The theme of being present was again on my mind and for now that seems to be my mantra...be in this moment and this moment and this moment. I looked down and my legs were spinning a steady tempo as if on auto pilot. That gave me the opportunity to see what was around me. An exspansive ocean. Land jutting out into this ocean. A large city - Boston - framed over water on the horizon. The light was bright but had this thick quality, almost mist like. My legs kept time to this music I was seeing around me.
A thought occurred to me that when my time living near the ocean is over I don't want to have missed any part of the experience. In other words I don't to feel nostalgic about my time here because I didn't fully absorb the experience of being part of such a powerful part of Nature.
Someday when I am living nearer to the mountains I will know the beauty of this place I call my ocean home, and be grateful that I had this time here.
So today I felt full of wonder, gratitude, privilege, and humility. In one hundred years from now no one who is alive right now will still be here. An entirely new group of humanity will be living. It's such a short time we have when you really contemplate it. And it goes by in a blink. Look here it is - the first day of the new year is one hour away from being gone.
What I experienced this morning on my first ride of 2011 was the poignant realization that one day I will merge body mind and soul with that Ocean. And I can't believe how fast it happened.
With love...
A bike ride of course. After getting the morning to sleep in which for me is anything past 7am I eventually suited up and heading out on my 'cross bike. The temp was a delicious 50 degrees and with the snow piled up and melting fast, made it feel like Spring. If only! It has been weeks since my last ride outdoors and it felt good to actually be moving instead of spinning away in my office after work staring at my computer and some inspirational training program. Ahh.
As I made my way towards the town line at Preston Beach the smell of the ocean was deliciously pungent, and very visceral. I took a deep inhale through my nose and felt my lungs slowly fill with this vitalized air. Having lived in this seaside community for the past 14 years I often don't notice my surroundings in such a body centered way. I'm usually wrapped up in my going somewhere and in my truck isolated from the elements. But today on my bicycle I was completely focused on this sensation coming in to me in the form of the ocean smell. The theme of being present was again on my mind and for now that seems to be my mantra...be in this moment and this moment and this moment. I looked down and my legs were spinning a steady tempo as if on auto pilot. That gave me the opportunity to see what was around me. An exspansive ocean. Land jutting out into this ocean. A large city - Boston - framed over water on the horizon. The light was bright but had this thick quality, almost mist like. My legs kept time to this music I was seeing around me.
A thought occurred to me that when my time living near the ocean is over I don't want to have missed any part of the experience. In other words I don't to feel nostalgic about my time here because I didn't fully absorb the experience of being part of such a powerful part of Nature.
Someday when I am living nearer to the mountains I will know the beauty of this place I call my ocean home, and be grateful that I had this time here.
So today I felt full of wonder, gratitude, privilege, and humility. In one hundred years from now no one who is alive right now will still be here. An entirely new group of humanity will be living. It's such a short time we have when you really contemplate it. And it goes by in a blink. Look here it is - the first day of the new year is one hour away from being gone.
What I experienced this morning on my first ride of 2011 was the poignant realization that one day I will merge body mind and soul with that Ocean. And I can't believe how fast it happened.
With love...
Comments
I love you Jamie