the next 50 needs more ocean
It's July, which is my birth month -- and this year is a big one, I'm turning 50! Because I swim in a gene pool shared by long livers (three of my grandparents lived past 95, and one lived until 102!), I figure I'm only halfway done. So to celebrate my birthday, I've decided that for every day for the first two weeks of this month, I'm going to share images and words representing what I hope the next 50 years will have more of. Time to say it and claim it, by gum. And maybe, if what I say resonates with you, you'll be inspired to get more of these things for your next 50 years, too.
The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.
~ Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)
When I was in elementary school, my family lived in this old grey house on the beach. And I mean ON the beach -- our back yard was entirely made of sand. The house had bats in the ceiling and paint was peeling off the walls, but just walking out the back door and immediately into the sand still made the house pretty cool. (The bats drove my mother to distraction, though.) Still, I didn't think much of it -- we were living in a relatively small fishing village at the time, and all of my friends lived walking distance from the beach. It's just how it was.
Fast-forward 45 years or so, and I still love the ocean -- it's where I feel most rested, and most calm. Marcus feels the same way: coincidentally, he grew up in a small village near the ocean as well. And so, whenever we have time off, if we're not visiting family, we're often visiting the ocean. It feels most familiar.
Ironically, even though we live relatively near the coast -- Galveston is a mere 45 minutes' drive away -- we often forget it's there. So for the next 50, I hope we make the time to get to the coast more often. And perhaps one day we'll retire in a beach house by the sea.
Soundtrack: The sound of sunshine going down by Michael Franti
Also for my birthday, I thought I'd give a nice, deep discount to one of my most popular online courses, GLOW: a 21-day ecourse for claiming your light! So if you'd like to get more light in your life, enter coupon code WATCHMEGLOW for 30% off the course. It really is a great course: one participant said she was so happy to rediscover "how blessed I am in my life"; another said, "GLOW came into my life at the perfect time. It is slowly changing my mental state and I have been focusing on the positives for the first time in ages." So join me. It's the perfect self-care for the summer.