I’ve always connected deeply to water. I feel at home in all of its forms. Be that a lake, river, rain, or Billie Eilish’s “Ocean Eyes”. There’s something about the stark duality of water that resonates with my truest self. Elegant yet fierce. Amorphous yet unyielding. Loving yet intolerant. Benign yet brooding.
Succinctly, I admire water’s innate ability to be many things and unapologetic for everything. Water gives you what you give it. It’s your choice whether to approach water with respect or not but be prepared that your intentions are known and will be reflected to you. Water is not cruel, but it does swiftly deliver justice.
To propose a concrete example, imagine you’re enjoying a long weekend at the beach. You’ve spent the afternoon sipping Piña Coladas under a palm tree and reading the book you swore you’d finish a year prior. Suddenly, a storm rolls through making the sky deep indigo and rumble a warning. The ocean becomes turbulent, reckless, and enraged. Despite seeing the ocean’s ferocity you are disappointed you haven’t gone for a swim yet today and rise from your beach chair to enter its waters. Instead of respecting the ocean’s power, you demanded it meets you exactly on your terms and risked your life in doing so.
At the risk of being too obvious in my writing, this metaphor is to say that I’ve spent much of my life convinced I had to be “this” or “that”. That I had to form myself into what others expected from me. There was no middle way available to my psyche. I couldn’t be all of my pieces at once, right? I couldn’t possibly demand others approach me with respect and consideration, right? I deserve whatever others decide I’m worth, right?
wrong.
I deserve respect, care, intimacy, love, and beauty. I am delicate, fierce, considerate, selfish, intelligent, silly, intuitive, inquisitive, adaptable, unbreakable, brave, afraid, vulnerable, defensive, trusting, divine, and human. I am worthy of what feels right to me. I am all of my pieces and my ultimate authority.
I’m learning how to show up authentically with all of my juxtaposed pieces in tow. I’m beginning to understand how to only invite those that respect my needs and desires to be close to my heart. I’m starting to see that a low tide only means that a high tide is inevitably on the way. This is the lesson water is teaching me. Like water, the stability of this lesson in my soul ebbs and flows, but never leaves me.
Be great everyone,
Kendall