The sea has so many personalities, determined to a large extent by the weather and season. I once lived in an amazing flat that looked out over the beach, and I spent many a happy hour just sitting and watching the sea and skyscapes. I tasked myself with trying to describe each day. Here are some examples:
“slate grey below, a clouded sky; shared sobriety.”
“Blue-grey splashed with turquoise.”
“Mirrored streaks of light breaking the gun metal stillness.”
“White rimmed runnels”
“Constant low growling, throaty snarls, incessant churning sloshes, endless rattle.”
“The ‘surf is up’ – the whole expanse of sea is a white charge of storming and toppling towers of roar and might.”
“The sea was flat with no where to go, slight shrugs of boredom towards the land.”
Did you know?
The sea is a great mystery – despite us all feeling we are familiar with it in all its guises. More of the planet Mars has been mapped and explored than our oceans. Much of these remain uncharted and even unexplored.
The ocean is like an entirely separate world. There are trenches, mountains, volcanos, and lakes and rivers. As seawater makes its way through layers of salt, it forms little depressions on the ocean floor. Because the water around these depressions contains more salt than normal seawater, it’s denser and sinks into the depressions, creating little briny pools. These are a lot like the lakes we know in that they have shorelines—and some of them even have waves.
A whole other world exists within its hidden depths!
Reflective moment
If people are like the ocean, we should not even pretend to know them. Constantly altered by their experiences, influenced by those around, and even the weather, we change as often as the surface of the sea, and hide as well as the oceans, other worlds inside. However, we tend to view people’s personality as ‘fixed’ or permanent. How often so we re-assess our view of the people we know?
There is beauty in our shape-shifting ever evolving process change. To judge people is a waste of time, because it will be like saying you don’t like the sea because its fierce waves scare you – missing all the times it cradles and soothes on a sunny day.
We should greet people as we do the sea when we reach the slipway and can see what mood it has taken on today. We should greet them with curiosity, interest, and with appreciation that waves can be crashing below even if the surface is unruffled and calm.
It is through the freedom to change over time that we can learn from experience, try again, fail and then succeed, change direction, decide to be different, evolve and fully be the person we want to be. It means we can forgive others, and when they say ‘sorry’, expect them to change. People stay interesting if we stay curious and are interested in them; travel along beside them as we all reflect the sky and deep hidden sea trenches beneath the surface of our lives.
The sound of the beach today
Relax in the hiss and swoosh of the waves and wind combined, while reflecting on how important it is to listen with an open heart.
Marine Moments 
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