At times I’m a very visual person, I tend to like to have things spelled out for me in a fashion in which I can envision the way things work. When I am reading, or remembering what I read, I don’t remember the words, but the scenes and emotional connections that are created by the words. I can tell you exactly what happens in my favorite books, not by remembering how the author wrote it, but by the way I envisioned it. It makes sense to me, then, that I view the life of a person in terms of a ballet of back and forth.
The best example I can come up to describe how I visualize this is a beach. I like beaches right about sundown, when the water is warm, but the sun isn’t so bright and draining. This has no real impact on my comparison, but in my mind right now I’m picturing a beach, the sun hanging behind me, casting shadows across it. The sky is fading from orange to the deep purple of twilight and a coolness is carried on the breeze. In my mind the beach is empty, it is just me there, enjoying the stillness of the evening. All that can be heard is the swish of the water against the packed sand of the shore.
It is that water that helps me visualize life in it’s most basic mode. The water on the beach, not the huge splashing wave, but the small current of water that flows up around your feet, washes over you just that bit, and then sinks back into the ocean. I feel a person’s life is represented in this fashion. We surge forward in our lives, encompassing great feats, and high points in our life. Then we recede, the waters fall back as parts of our life change, and we are forced to change with them. We push again, and up the beach the water slides, smooth and quiet. But just as we progress, we must fall back, and so we again retreat, forced back by whatever events in our life cause us to stumble.
I think it is necessary for someone to have good and bad things in their life. If a life is marked only by the happy, the positive, success, or achievement they cannot fully comprehend how to celebrate their victories. It is only until you fall into the bitter, hard places in life that you appreciate the sweetness that comes with the dawning sun.
This, and more, at Synaptic Thought.
