Left the house a little after 9:00 today. Cloudy skies and mild outside.

When I get to the parking lot, the ocean surface looks super smooth. I head down the stairs and can see some waves rolling in. There is a SSW swell in the water today bringing the surf up a couple notches since the weekend, but nothing dramatic.

I see a surfer heading up and am curious how it is that his bare feet make the pavement wet all the way at the top of the stairs. It is a long stairway. Believe me, I am not the only one who thinks this. In fact I would say it is a frequent focal point of conversation that I hear on these stairs.

Wouldn’t ones feet eventually dry after walking down the beach and then on hundreds of feet of cement? Perhaps there is a steady flow of water dripping down his wetsuit? Someone needs to commission a study on this.

I make it to the sand (finally) and feel the water. Still feels good. I don’t think it has cooled off a bit since Sunday.

As I begin to swim, the water continues to feel good. It is also not as brown today and is mostly blueish greyish but there is still very little visibility.

The grey sky and grey water make the horizon nearly disappear. I want to disappear into this moment and this place. I settle into a warmth near my heart. Sometimes it seems that if I can just be present with what is in front of me, I can sense a sort of essence of myself that draws my attention to this warm feeling. Call it self, call it God, Holy Spirit, Atman, whatever.

This week I have been listening to Rainn Wilson’s autobiography. He is the guy that played Dwight in The Office. He talks about this defining moment in acting school where he believes he finally learned to be an actor. It was preceded by a sort of break down (of course) where he just felt like he was trying and trying and trying and could not break through. Then a light came on and he realized it was fear that was holding him back and he needed to have the courage to be boring. Rather than try to push affectation into his performances, he needed to have the guts to simply just settle into the character and let the life of that character emerge.

This really resonated with me. I think it is scary not to push ourselves and strive for what we think we should be doing. We may fear that we will languish in mediocrity. Yet the paradox exists in the fact that we need to let go of this pushing especially when it is coming from a place of “I gotta get to this place and if I don’t I’m fucked.” Our energy has to be found in who we are and not a vision of who we think we need to be.

I also watched this documentary last weekend on Netflix called The Alpinist that left me with a similar impression. The movie basically tells the life story of this guy (a kid really in his lower 20s) who becomes this world class mountain climber. He is super socially awkward and completely immersed in his craft. He is not interested in social media or self promotion. In fact he evades the film crew of this movie to do a couple of historic solo climbs. The director asked him why he is doing this and he said because if he is being filmed, it is not a solo climb. There is this other line in the film that I really liked. When he was just starting out, he broke the speed record of climbing some rock face that I can’t remember the name of. He said, “I had been climbing this wall regularly and I was just curious how long it takes me.” I love that. He says “how long it takes” and NOT “how fast I could do it.” This guy just naturally fell into this super power because it was who he was.

Anyways I really find myself drawn to these stories when I see them and I seem to see them a lot lately. To me it is very much about faith and presence. Right here it is about breath and water.

I’m seeing several lobster traps today. Saturday was the beginning of lobster season and I didn’t seem to see any on Sunday but I see at least half a dozen today which probably means there are a lot more.

I finish up the swim and head back up the stairs. I am looking for my footprints on the ground. I am telling you they are way more faint than the surfer I saw before the swim. Maybe it is my arch? My lack of wetsuit? Who knows.