There is a town that I visited on the West Coast of Ireland 10 years ago called Doolin. About 8 km from there are the Cliffs of Moher that I visited on a typically gray Irish morning. As I looked out over the Cliffs, which are 800 feet above the ocean, there were sets of waves stretching from the shoreline to as far as the eye could see. There must have been 8 or 10 sets of waves just waiting to come in. I was overcome with the sheer beauty of the scene and I must have stood there for nearly 30 minutes almost in a meditation as I saw one wave after another break onto the shore below. In the midst of this meditation, this truly incredible thought entered my mind which took this entire experience to another level. What if these waves were like phases of my life just waiting to happen? And then I looked down at the thin sliver of a beach that was below me? Without my perspective I would only see one or maybe two sets of waves.
As I stood there on that beach, no matter what I did, I could not stop these waves from hitting the beach. Right then I saw the wisdom in this natural experience; in life sometimes the best we can do is be patient and do nothing.
As I have entered challenging periods of my life, I have applied this lesson frequently. Sometimes the best course of action is no action. It is so easy to get caught up in the ups and downs of life, but sometimes the wisest course of action is just to stand on that beach and wait for the next wave to roll in. When it does it will bring with it new energy and new opportunities.
Nature has a way of rearranging and evolving, which impacts all that is around it. My thought process is to understand that and try my best to flow with it. Wait for these waves and embrace them. There is always an opportunity that is nestled within each wave that I can leverage to make a positive change in my life. If I am always making positive changes, then overall my life is getting a little better day by day, which as someone recently said is one of the two purposes of life. The other is using your life to make a big difference in the world.
Now some would argue that in the simplest form, this is the age old argument about fate vs. free will, which is a philosophical debate that I have often pondered going back to my days at Cal. I guess the camp that supports free will would say you can just leave the beach altogether. But I would say that this type of change would on one hand break the immediate cycle of waves in front of you, but on the other hand would bring with it a new set of challenges and opportunities all their own. I strongly believe that certain choices we make or people we meet brings us to our beach, much like the train Gwyneth Paltrow's character Helen made or missed in that movie Sliding Doors. Every life has defining moments that are mostly unknown to us and that is simply fate. But how we deal with the waves we encounter is our opportunity to express our free will. Some will fight the events that life puts in front of them, but I have learned to embrace them and make the most of them.
So you can change beaches, but nature is still going to come at us in waves and most importantly if you are not happy in life, look for the next wave and embrace what comes with it.
