Man, it’s been far too long since I spent a week at the beach. I could use a little time by the water soon.
Sitting at my desk, daydreaming of some much needed R&R, I’ve been asking myself..
Why do so many of us love a day at the beach?
There’s a certain smell that belongs only to the ocean. It’s a perfect blend of salt, sunscreen, and fresh sea air. Every time it hits me, I’m carried backward and forward at once through all the different versions of myself who’ve stood on that same shifting ground.
When I was young, the beach felt like…freedom. Endless sunny days with friends, a volleyball net fluttering in the breeze, ridiculously bad sunburns that didn’t hurt until tomorrow. We chased waves and each other, armed with ice cold cans of beer and infinite amounts of raw energy. Back then, the beach was about noise, movement, and momentum. It was the bright thrum of living life at full volume.
Then came the father years. The energy shifted but the magic remained. My beach gear evolved from ghetto blasters and Styrofoam coolers to wagons and wet wipes. Umbrellas suddenly became essentials. Sandwiches wrapped in foil were passed down like holy offerings to sandy little hands. The soundtrack changed from reggae music and drunken laughter to the squeals of children feeding seagulls and playing in the surf.
“Big Wave-Big Wave, not for Brady, not for Peyton”.
The ocean, patient as ever, quietly watched me trade the spontaneity of my youth for the stewardship of fatherhood.
Now, on the other side of fifty, the shoreline feels different again. The noise has quieted. The waves haven’t changed, but I sure have. And in the rhythm of the sea with its clockwork ebbs and flows, I’ve begun to find something far richer than pure entertainment. I’ve found deep reflection.
So here it is friends, my meditation on the sea, what these lazy beach days now mean to me, and on the seasons of my life I have lived along its edge (one week of PTO at a time for over 25 years).
There was a time when the beach meant motion.
Loud laughter and frisbees cutting through salt air.
Coolers rattling with empty beer cans,
sunburns worn like badges of summer victory.
We were bronzed gladiators of youth,
gods of the shoreline with frozen cocktails and sun bleached hair,
performing the ancient rituals of flirtation beneath clear blue skies.
The sea then was simply a backdrop
a stage for our dramas,
a mirror to our restless energy.
Then came fatherhood.
The beach changed shape, and so did I.
Now it was wagons loaded with toys and towels,
plastic shovels clattering like cymbals of duty.
Umbrellas fighting for space with boogie boards and mountains of SPF 50,
shade tents became sanctuaries for naps,
and sandwiches wrapped in tin foil were currency for peace.
The tides still sang,
but I was too busy chasing hats,
building castles doomed to high tide,
and overseeing diaper changes to notice the melody.
It was no longer about me and the ocean—
it was about us and the day.
The horizon waited, ever so patiently.
Now, in my midlife, the sea calls in a new voice
lower, slower, infinitely wise.
No longer simply a stage prop,
it has become the teacher.
Here, barefoot in the cool dawn sand,
I can feel the planet spinning.
The sun creeps up, and the earth seems to sigh in its orbit.
The tides breathe with the moon’s gentle pull
a conversation continues between worlds older than memory.
I sit still enough to feel it all.
The ocean’s meditation becomes my own.
Every wave is a thought rising and falling,
each crest dissolving into foam and calm.
The Buddhists say we are both the wave and the water
momentary forms, eternal substance.
Watching the horizon blur,
I start to believe them.
I think of how the sea has always been recycling itself,
since the very beginning of time.
The same water that once fell on Mesopotamia’s fertile fields
now carries ships through the Thames,
glides past Venetian gondolas,
and returns here, whispering against my toes.
It has all been here before
rising, falling, evaporating, returning.
Just like us.
The sand tells its own epic tale
stone broken by storm,
shells and skeletons worn down by time.
A billion years of attrition and tenderness.
To hold a handful is to cradle history.
Each grain once part of something vast
a cliff, a coral reef, a living creature.
Walking the tide line, I find seashells.
tiny spirals and shattered halves
remnants of beings that once clung to life beneath the waves.
They are beautiful in their emptiness.
They remind me that all things, eventually, are returned to the sea.
When I close my eyes,
I listen to the waves and the wind
and feel how everything connects us
the burning star above,
the turning sphere beneath,
the salt in my blood echoing the ocean’s chemistry.
My skin shifts shades beneath the sun’s relentless glow,
reminding me how absurd it is
that we’ve ever judged one another
by the colors we wear for such a short time.
And someday,
when my chair on this beach sits empty,
I hope my family will find comfort in the sunset.
That they’ll picture me sitting quietly,
a silhouette against the fading light,
marveling one last time
at the miracle of just being here
in the hum of the earth’s turning,
in the pulse of the tide
in the
endless
breathing
now.
I suppose that’s what the beach has taught me. Not just how to play or parent or pause long enough for a week long vacation, but how to be.
Every visit is a rehearsal for letting go, a quiet surrender to forces larger than myself.
The tide doesn’t cling. It doesn’t fight itself.
It arrives, it retreats, it returns.
And so do we.
Maybe that’s the real lesson of all these seasons of life lived by the seaside?
To live like the waves…
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