Dr. Ocean, Life Professor
By: Jim Mitchell
Tags: Life, Ocean, Lessons Learned

Most summers prior to this Covid year I would make it a point to make a pilgrimage to Mission Beach, San Diego and be close to the ocean for a week at a time or more. Several times a summer when possible. It has always been the best part of my year outside of play-work.

These trips are never about getting in to the ocean. Never have been. I don’t swim, surf, paddle or boogie board or any of that stuff. I generally never get in the water more than ankle deep while I’m walking 4–6 miles each afternoon near sunset…always at the surf line.

These trips are about being near the ocean. Close enough to hear the heartbeat of the ocean in the incoming and outgoing of the surf. Close enough to smell what a planet size body of water smells like. Close enough to feel its vibration. Close enough to sense how absolutely dangerous it can be if riled up. Close enough to put bare feet in the sand one more time and acknowledge the sand’s transformation over centuries in its eons old duel with the ocean.

Close is required. Not in.

Why the ocean then? Because the ocean reminds me of something. Many things I suppose.

During my first trips to the ocean back in high school I quickly got there is much to learn here. Here sitting in the sand. Walking in the sand. Lying on the sand. Much to learn about myself, my Self, my life, my choices, my fitting into the grand scheme of things, my pathetic attempts to understand the grand scheme of things. Much to learn about quiet, calm, patience, presence, holding space for myself. Much to learn about stillness. About peace.

The ocean became and continues to be my professor. My mentor. My guide.

Dr. Ocean.

The lessons began. One after another. Compelling me to look inward as I gazed outward at it. Trying futilely to take in its enormous presence. Again. Pushing me to delve deeply into self…into heart…into soul traveling downward and crooked…into spirit traveling up and straight.

I wish I had taken better notes back then.

Lesson 1:

It powerfully, urgently, and without care reminds me of my own insignificance. It confronts me with how utterly unimportant I am and we are, individually and collectively, in the universal scheme of things. No matter how much we bray like hungry donkeys insisting that we matter.

I’m reminded, again, how the ocean in front of me at that moment is wrapped like a python with earth as its lunch around the entire planet. All the waters touching all the waters. All the waters connected to all the waters.

Imagine that. Something that can wrap around something the size of this rock we live on.

I try to fathom how wide and deep the ocean is and it’s beyond my puny human comprehension. Makes me dizzy.

Its great and magnificent size reminds me of the possibility of the sizes of things when the field of play is infinite space and time. The ocean helps me understand, barely, how huge the earth is. For most we will always consider the earth as the biggest thing we can just understand. Driving and flying for hours trying to visit family and friends, at least pre-Covid eh, reminds us this thing up under all of us is massive. To say the least.

And if that doesn’t get me to remember how ever so small I truly am in this particular game, the ocean pushes me. The ocean enrolls the earth in the lesson.

The earth, my other unrepentant teacher, is itself insignificant when compared to other bodies in this dark empty infinite space. This black radioactive vacuum. The earth is a bit player in this theater. Standing in the deep background of the stage. Great costume. No lines.

Earth makes me look up in wonder at the other ‘things’ out there in the darkness. It’s mostly infinite darkness out there you know. It reminds me of the sun, our nuclear reactor benefactor, and how the sun can hold a million earths. Hold on. Trying to process that again. I look up at the sun and say to myself ‘it doesn’t look all that big. Then I remember it’s 93 million+/- miles aways. 93 million miles away. And then it hits me. Both earth and sun shrink into nothingness, much like myself, compared to the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall, a vast cluster of galaxies held together by gravity, and estimated to be about 10 billion light-years across.

Imagine that. Something 10 billion light years across. I try and understand based on my flying from Phoenix to Auckland or Cape Town or Buenos Aires. Those are my reference points for a long ass trip. A long way across.

So, I have to make my crusty old brain work and remind myself that a light year is about 6 trillion miles. A trillion is a thousand billions. So, a light year is six thousand billion miles. The earth is about 24,000 miles in circumference. That’s around.

Try to imagine a billion miles. Now multiply that by 6 thousand. So…carry the 2, take away the 7, plus .532 and the square root of a Big Mac…Ok. Got it. That’s 1 light year across. Now let’s see…10 billion lights years across is 10 billion times 6 trillion miles across. My brain hurts. Bad. In my book, that’s pretty freakin’ big by anyone’s standard.

Dare I continue to insist vociferously that I matter? Really? Damn ocean just fukked me up.

I now see that I’m a microscopic speck to the ocean which itself is a microscopic speck to the sun which itself is waaaaay less than a microscopic speck to the HCB Great Wall of galaxies. Way like with a billion zeros less.

So, let’s compare fleshbag me at 237 pounds and 6’3” tall to 10 billion times 6 trillion miles across. Any spark, any notion to still jump up and claim on my behalf “I am significant! It matters that I’m here!’ gets snuffed out in its cradle. That’s not a bad thing. The lessons in humility are always hard on the ego. Always.

It reminds me that a puny 237lb bag of water, bone, and flesh cannot matter much in a space like this. Not much at all. In a space like this, I don’t even qualify as that microscopic speck. Hell, the earth and the sun don’t even qualify as microscopic specks so I’m in good company! That’s not a bad thing either.

This realization ensures that I never think that who I am and what I believe is at the center of the universe and that all other life, all other existence, rotates around me. You know there are some folks that think like that. You know some of them. So do I.

It humbles me. Again. And again. And 10 billion x 6 trillion more times again.

Lesson 2:

It reminds me of what it means to be consistent. Some humans dread getting up and going to work for 40 years in a row so they can retire. Some dread turning 60 or 70 and realizing they’ve gotten old. The ocean reminds me that for 4 billion years, it has feared nothing and done one thing brilliantly. Be the ocean. Never doing more. Nor less. Never wavering at being just that. Never wanting. Never kvetching. Just being. The ocean. All the ocean it can be. The only thing it can be. It does it with such brilliance. And grace.

Imagine that. 4 billion years on the job and you still can’t retire. 4 thousand million years. No pension yet. No trout fishing yet. No RV.

That’s a long ass time punching the time clock every day.

The ocean was the first teacher relentlessly driving into my meat brain that I too must discover for myself what is my ‘being’. What is my never wavering ‘way’. How do I find that and I do I ‘be’ that gloriously. Every day. All day. All night. All my life. How do I not let anything deter me from being that in all of my fullness.

And in being that, to not look with envy nor jealously at all the other beings in the universe. Being is not a competition. I cannot compete with the Sun being the Sun. I cannot compete with the Ocean. Both are at the pinnacle of their beingness. My ‘human job’ is to find the pinnacle of my beingness. Whatever that takes. However long it takes. Wherever it takes me.

It reminds me how important it is to know my true nature and gifts. And to be that. Fully. Completely. Without complaint. Without resistance.

I quickly got ‘I’m gonna need some help with this homework’.

Lesson 3:

The ocean reminds me not to be a coward. To not hide my light under a bushel. To not shrink. To not hide who I am and what I’m fully and completely committed to. The ocean does not hide. Not even from the Sun. It lies naked in front of all of us, in front of all of creation, gloriously being the ocean. The only thing it can be.

It reminds me I too must become naked in front of all creation. Gloriously being the only thing I can be.

Lesson 4:

I love watching the interplay between the ocean and the beach.

It reminds me of the give and take with what surrounds me always. All the other beings. The ocean puts on its full display of playing with the sand. The forceful entrance, the mad rush and noisy swirling together, the gentle retreat. It’s like watching two lovers fuck their brains out while I dispassionately stroll on by.

Or watching the best tango or authentic hula dancers on the planet.

A dance that has and will continue to change both. Has to continue to change both. Until the earth dries up taking the ocean with it. But until then, it has to dance with the sand.

I too must learn to dance with that which surrounds me. To dance effortlessly. Passionately. Completely. To allow the dance to change me as I change others. Until the universe takes me away.

Lesson 5:

Sometimes the weight of worldly things weighs heavy on my heart. On my mind. On my soul. Until I remember what the ocean whispered to me long ago, what the earth whispered to me this morning…

‘This, too, shall pass’.

Coming from a 13 billion year old ‘person’, I choose to listen.

It reminds me to not attach my beingness to any of these fleeting already turning to dust ‘things’. Things and people will come and go as long as I’m in the game. Then…at some point I will go. I, too, shall pass.

I need to listen.

The ocean reminds me to not be so concerned about what’s happening around me. At any given point in time. That, too, shall pass. All of it shall pass. What make demands for my attention and awareness today…will not last beyond a few years. In five years it will be but a faint glow in the basement of my memory palace. Years are nothing in the life span of a planet. Less in the life of the Universe. All will pass into faint and distant memories, if remembered at all. All.

As I remember my own life, filled with the the Cold War, the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, hippies, Black Power, Rock and Roll, Hip Hop, work, play, travel, food, relationships, and more I ponder and wonder about all the things that have happened in the ocean’s lifetime. A significant part of earth’s history itself. An earth empty of everything but non-living beings. Imagine that. An empty earth.

All species history. All human history. Wars. Plagues. Droughts. Famine. Horror. Wonder. Then billions and billions of humans, animals and plants and more coming. And going. And gone.

And in all that time the ocean was…just being the ocean. Sometimes more liquid. Sometime more solid. But the ocean, nonetheless. It never stopped being what it has to be no matter what was happening around it. And there have been billions of years of happening around it.

What a lesson in constancy.

These lessons have changed my life and the appreciation of my ‘little while’ existence for the better. I’m not religious or even too woojie woojie. I don’t believe in heavens or afterlifes or reincarnation or any of that. My belief is simply this: Somehow, not of my own doing, I ended up in this game. This playing field. Lots of stuff around me on my part of the playing field. Lots more stuff around me in every conceivable direction stretching out to infinity. Understand the game. Understand the rules. Make the best of it. Because one day it will all go dark. The Last Blink is coming for all of us. What do I want to be about, fully and completely, before that happens.

The ocean teaches me that’s as good as this gets.

That’s not a bad thing.

So, as often as I can, I go to the ocean to sit, stand, lie, walk, and remember. Remember lessons learned and lessons still to be learned. To remember that everything exists and that everything that currently exists is passing into nothingness. Same as me. Same as all of us.

Nothing is all of our futures.

To remember insignificance. To remember being. To BE before insignificance takes me aways. Be. For a while.

I missed the ocean and its teachings this year.

Fucking Covid.

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