The Ocean, Another Cruise and House Fires

I know this sounds like a strange title for a post.  This is a picture I took from the ship on the Caribbean trip.  It seemed like when I got home, I didn't have the time that I wanted to fully integrate the all encompassing experience of this trip and all the islands we visited.  Every day on the ocean was a new day with new adventures, new places to visit and new things to eat.  After every one of my trips, I am just ready for the next one.  My human personality says, "ah - that was great.  There won't be anything that good again."  The nature of the human spirit is to continue to explore and expand so there will always be more trips.  I was thinking of another cruise next winter.

After I got home, one of my friends lost most of her stored possessions in a house fire.  I am not very attached to my stuff, but have never watched a fire.  My friend spent some time with me and I was trying to be a good listener to her as she processed about her losses.  She stayed at my house and was making a list of everything she lost in the fire for the insurance company.  As she sat in my kitchen writing, every time I opened a cupboard, it reminded her of another item she had lost.  She said, "oh - I had a vacuum sealer that I will never get to use - I had molasses - I had a pasta maker that I only used once - all of my honey is gone - so is my nutmeg and my cinnamon.  All the baking dishes I bought for my daughter will never get to be enjoyed.  My towels are gone.  My books are gone."

One morning she got up and had been dreaming about her books that burned up.  She said, "my books are not gone, they are just now in my dreams."

A few days after she left, I was haunted by her statement, "I will never get to enjoy this thing that I lost."

I don't have a bucket list.  I have done pretty much everything that I wanted to do with my life.  My primary focus is to actually get a book done, published and start teaching workshops.  I want to travel more and camp more and explore the planet more, but no one place stands out as the place I have to see.

I realized that I did have one major thing that I was putting off.  I wanted to take all of my kids on a cruise.  Every time I come back from a cruise, they want to know what it is like.  There is just no way that I can explain the magic of waking up on the ocean, watching the view change constantly, eating amazing food, exploring the ship and visiting interesting ports.  I cannot explain what it is like to float in a hot tub on a ship while looking at Juneau, Alaska.  I cannot explain what it is like to wake up every morning knowing that you are in a completely different location than you were when you went to bed.  I thought in a couple of years I would take all my kids on a cruise.

My friends haunting words came back to me.  "If I would have only known that all of this stuff was going to get burned up, I would have enjoyed it while I had it."  It suddenly dawned on me that all of my children were going to be in Montana in August.  As I write this, one is in Ecuador, one in Austria and one in the U.S.  I suddenly became aware of the fact that I did not have to put my dreams on hold.  Within 2 days I had booked all of us on an Alaskan cruise. 

A week later, I was driving my father-in-law to an appointment.  He began to reflect on his entire life and how quickly the decades had passed through his life.  I finally said to him, "I don't care how old you are, we all still have only today, no matter what our age is."  He looked at me kind of funny and said, "well I suppose you are right."

The ocean is infinite.  It never sleeps.  It is constantly moving and changing.  It is ripe with new life and infinite potential just like our lives.  It took my friends house fire to make me see that I don't have to put my dreams off for years in the future.  Today is the day.  Every day is a new day and we are the infinite potential.  Our spiritual potential is as vast as the ocean and then some.  Blessings