Last week we played a game in the rough surf of Rockaway Beach called “over or under”. It’s the only kind of game that I can tolerate; hardly any rules, nobody really wins or loses and it can be understood in seconds. You look at the waves coming in to the shore and decide whether you’re going to go “over” it and keep your head above water (extra points if you get some height) or if you’re going to go “under”, which can mean diving into the base of the wave hopefully before it breaks or by just simply ducking your head and staying where you are. It is a game because you play it with another person, comparing your call to theirs and the winner is the one who doesn’t get pummeled by a wave.
As I played this sweet and simple game last week, a joyful memory came to me of playing over or under with my mom and my best friend about ten years ago just a few miles down the shore from where I presently was. The memory isn’t particularly notable other than what it represents now; precious time spent laughing and playing with loved ones. In the moment I’m referring to as the memory, it seemed like a pleasant day that would surely happen again, nothing particularly notable about it. But what I realized yesterday is that it never did happen again and it likely never will. To be at that beach, playing in the ocean with those two people is a highly unlikely scenario as everyone has moved far away and to reunite in the same location would require a circumstance like a wedding or a funeral, which probably wouldn’t include time spent frolicking in the ocean.
It’s almost impossible to see in the moment that what you’re experiencing has a high probability of being the only time it will be just like this. (Besides the point is the idea that no one moment will ever be the same because every breath of air we take is different from the last.) When it’s not something that’s particularly special like travel abroad or an event that we put weight on like a graduation or a birthday celebration, its easy to assume that we’ll have this experience again because we hope and plan for our friends to stay in our lives. Which fortunately a lot of the time they do, but I fear I am missing out on the beauty of these seemingly in between moments that I take for granted and only years later realize how special they are.
How would I act if I knew this would be the last time I would frolic with these specific people in this exact place? Maybe it’s just a depressing thought that wouldn’t help to make the moment any more precious… but maybe it would help me get past some of the hell I create in my own mind about what could be better. If I could only silence the finger drumming of the man from the next table over, avoid the sand cutting my legs from the person over there shaking out their towel, adjust the angle of the sun so that it wasn’t quite so harsh in my eyes, lower the volume of the aggressive guitar forward music projecting from a shitty amp.
In the past decade of wellness being foisted upon us, all of this being in the moment talk can be irritating. Not to mention that it’s an incredibly difficult thing to do with any degree of success. How quickly the slightest irritation can take us out of the thing we came to experience. I don’t have any answers on how to be more present that you haven’t read about already, but I think for me it looks like praying to God to remove my irritation/rage/fill in the blank about whatever is happening along with inviting a softness and a tenderness to both the part of myself that is agitated and also to all of us, knowing that nothing lasts forever. It’s a redirecting of my attention to what is good, right now.
I suppose what I’m talking about is just nostalgia, which seems to get the best of us sensitive types. It’s an absolute favorite topic of mine and I don’t think this piece is doing it justice so I’m going to hand it over to Michael Chabon who defines it as:
The nostalgia that I write about, that I study, that I feel, is the ache that arises from the consciousness of lost connection.
If I really think about what I’m trying to get at here, that’s what it is. A sense of a lost connection. When will I ever feel connected at the same time to those two people who are so special to me? When will I feel the current of their connection to each other and to me? If I did attempt to will it into existence would it maintain the same aura of authenticity or would it feel forced and result in disappointment? I think it’s just one of the beautiful complexities of being human, that we yearn for the past even though we were probably annoyed by something when it was our present.
I loved this.
For the past almost nine months I have been making an effort to make my life softer and easier. To be kinder to myself and not let little shit annoy the fuck outta me. To not feel like I am terrible at everything I attempt to do - but to actually give my self a pat on my back.
I liked this line; "It’s a redirecting of my attention to what is good, right now."