journey – Page 4

(Originally published June 17, 2009)

You can’t beat a stroll along the surf in the evening. It is the perfect desert for a day that has offered plenty of feasts for both the eyes and the spirit.

Using the setting sun as my compass, I skirt the incoming tide and pause every few steps to snatch a stray shell before the retreating waves can steal it away. My toes dig into the wet sand as the pipers and gulls flutter around me, searching for one last snack before finally calling their day done.

This will be my last evening at the beach. Sometime early Thursday morning we will brush the sand from our clothes, pack our suitcases, and head west for home. (A secret, though, between you and me: I’m not shaking my sand off. I want to walk around with it on me a little while longer.) So tonight I am enjoying one last walk to take it all in.

And I’m not the only one. A few yards in front of me is a young surfer just out of the water and taking the long way home.

He places his board down just beyond the surf and bends as if tying an imaginary shoe. He slowly traces something into the wet sand with a finger and, still stooping, considers the marks. A slow and solemn nod displays his approval, then he rises and walks on.

So do I, pausing after a few steps to pick up a clam shell for my daughter. I look back up to see the surfer now heading for dry sand and the boardwalk, where a battered red bicycle waits to take him home. Curious, I walk ahead to the spot where he had bent down and find these four words:

ALL WILL WASH AWAY.

I look over and see him climb onto the bike and tuck his surfboard under his right arm. There he sits, staring out at the beach.

And here I stand, staring down at these profound words.

You don’t generally expect such deep thinking from hip surfer dudes, just as you don’t generally expect it from redneck hicks. In that, we are kindred spirits. And in more, too.

Because these past few days have brought much the same sentiment from me. I’ve been coming here since I was a child, and that sense of permanence has always been a source of comfort. The ocean never changes. It is immense and beautiful and old and will always be such. Yet while it is fixed, I am not. I may visit this same place every summer, but I always bring along a different me.

The me this year is much different than the person who last gazed upon these waters, though exactly how different I cannot say. Rather than time dulling the edges of our lives, I think it sharpens them. It makes clearer the things that matter and the things that do not. Perhaps it is because my visit this year falls just a few weeks shy of my birthday that my thoughts have been centered more upon the future than the present. Thoughts that are best summed in the four words below me.

ALL WILL WASH AWAY.

There are times when life becomes simply unbearable for me, when the tides crash in much more than ease out and the treasures life gives me are snatched away and demanded back. And I’m sure I’m not alone. I have a feeling the young man on the red bike has recently suffered through something like that. I have a feeling you have suffered through that as well. Because we all have things in our lives that scare us and leave us to quake at the possibility that we are to merely borrow them for a time instead of holding them forever.

We all fear that all we love will be consumed by the enormity of this world and erased forever.

Yet still we arrive daily in our lives to write upon the shore, to cast our hearts and our hopes into the ebb and flow of our days in faith that we just may happen upon something that neither time nor tides can erase.

That is our quest in life. To find the eternal. To find that which cannot be washed away.

My family and I took a long trip over the weekend, long being a drive of nearly an hour and a half. Those who have kids understand that five minutes in the car with them can at times be too much. There is crying and complaining, spills and messes, and a seemingly endless chorus of “Are we there yet?” and “How much farther?”

That was our ride.

And this even with all the newfangled trinkets designed to make an hour and a half ride more comfortable. Things like DS games and DVD players. These things do well and good so long as they remain charged and the headaches do not start, which, in our case, lasted a grand total of forty minutes.

With aspirin handed out and the radio turned down, all that was left were those old fashioned games that helped me through some long rides of my own once upon a time. There was the ever-popular I Spy game, won by my son. My daughter won the out of state license plate game. They each tied at seven playing the game where you get the truckers to blow their horns.

But even after all that, there was still a half hour’s worth of driving to go. With the DS games dead, the DVD players on life support, and the radio station that seemed incapable of playing nothing but Van Halen’s “Panama,” there was nothing for us to do but wait.

“Won’t be long,” I promised. “We’ll get there soon enough.”

I knew that wasn’t exactly right. And I’ll say that while I said it, I was thinking of the drive back. Of going back there and getting out of that cramped car. Unbuckling my belt and stretching my legs and looking at the sun and hearing it welcome me home.

I’ve heard that life is all about the journey. The destination is not just irrelevant, it spoils all the fun. Sounds like a romantic notion. And just as most romantic notions, that one’s just plain ridiculous. What’s the use in going if you have nowhere to go? Why start when there is no end?

As I drove, road leading toward a horizon that only yielded more road, I decided there was also something else that could be described as a journey rather than a destination.

Hell.

My sour attitude didn’t last long. And of course I don’t want to imply that spending ninety minutes in the car with my family was hellish. It was not. It only seemed that way for a bit.

But after that bit I began to realize how apropos our drive was to life itself. Because to a certain extent we are all on a road. There are dips and curves, mountains and valleys. There are times when extreme concentration is necessary and times when everything seems flat and boring. Regardless, the point is to keep going. There is no heading back, not for any of us. The road is forward. It always shall be.

We have company along the way. Family and loved ones that sometimes get on our nerves but most times we know we could never live without. They are with us and we them, even though each has his or her own vantage point, his or her own place.

There are others too, sharing a bit of the road with us while we travel. Some pull alongside for a long while and become familiar. Others are there and then gone, never to be seen again. It’s a big road, life, and we all go at our own pace. Some are in a hurry and others take their time. But regardless, we all will reach The End someday.

The End. Oh yes. Because while the road may be wide and long, there is no room for existential thoughts of a journey without a destination. We may be given the freedom to ride as we wish, to be cautious or not, to ride with the windows down or rolled up tight, but that freedom ends there. We were not given the choice to be upon this road, and we are not given the choice to stay upon it.

And if that causes us grief, I say it shouldn’t. I say I look forward to that day when my ride is done. When I can unbuckle my seatbelt and step outside. I will stretch my legs and stare at the Son, and He will say welcome home.

All will wash away

The journey

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