moving along

With no worry about how long it would take me to get to my car I parked nearly five miles away the previous night, I hit the road on another walking adventure. 

I normally choose the recreation path but today I was determined to make it there walking along the beach. 

Workout clothes on, water bottles filled, iPod fully charged and nothing else to do the rest of the day. The first mile or so kept me wondering if I should've taken the bus instead, but the second I got to see and smell the ocean, I knew I'd made the right choice. Head phones on, music filling my ears; one minute it was a song that described my life and the next it was something that made my sadness worse and the next it was something that gave me hope or made me want to fly. 

The way that every grain of sand felt on my bare feet as my toes sunk into it with every step I took. The way the wind gently caressed my brown hair and made it grace my face as I tried to sweep it away behind my ears. At one point I lost all my thoughts and the music became more like a soft background sound in the movie of my life. I met and pet about a dozen dogs along the way, I talked to people I'd normally ignore, I saw runners and kids and surfers.

 Halfway on my way, I turned to look back and shed a few tears when I saw the people I had just passed in the distance, but nobody walking behind me. I took off my headphones for a minute so I could hear the ocean and it gave me a sense of peace. I closed my eyes, stretched my arms out, aimed my face at the vastness of the blue sky illuminated by the sun and decorated by the white trail of the plane going by, the sound of birds flying above me and the waves crashing on the shore. 

It was kind of a reminder that people & things come and go, but you can find beauty in letting go and keep going forward with your head up... Headphones back on, I lost my thoughts again and the joy of feeling that crisp blue endless water, the sand and the wind on my face, made me realize once again that all of our every day problems are nothing compared to the size of the world we breathe in. 

I danced around to the next song, skipped and jumped around like a fool and I didn't care who was watching me (even got a compliment on my dancing from the couple sitting by the stairs who had been watching me and enjoyed my freak show.)

On another Saturday night, I would probably call up everyone to see what they were doing and maybe go out and pretend to cure my sorrows with a cocktail or five; today, I'm going to spend it home alone watching at least three chick flicks I promised myself I would never watch, box of tissues in hand.

Part of the joy of being alive is experiencing pain. My favorite saying is that nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to learn. Today I learned a little bit to let it go.

Don't give up on your willingness to be happy no matter what. These days were meant for us to live, to run wild and be free... Enjoy the little things :)