Ancora Imparo*, part III

I like to walk.

And when I come to this place, I like to get up early, when the world is just coming alive, and stroll along the white sand beaches, listening to the sound of the tide moving lightly to shore, to the sound of the local avian population arguing mightily over who gets to eat first, to the sound of absolutely no human sound at all.

The sand is very soft in the morning, and very hard to navigate with any decorum until you get a bit closer to the shore. A little further down the beach, where the above photo was taken, they have a tractor that rakes the beach into a kind of picture-perfect uniformity, making it easier to transverse....but everybody usually just walks either in the surf, or just above it.

I walk just above it. I have nothing against getting my feet wet; but I have nothing to favor it, either. I gotta be me......

There are people, of course...some getting in their early morning jog; some talking on their telephones; some simply sitting and watching the Gulf with a steaming cup of coffee and a cigarette.

I stroll the 1.6 miles down, and the 1.6 miles back, allowing all that has piled up in the 51 previous weeks to slide away.

Plato was concocted the idea that we can only know ourselves through our interaction with others; that like a shadow on a wall, we can never truly see ourselves, but only an outline of ourselves. We must rely upon others to fill in the gaps, fill out the shadow. We are, in essence, what other people and our interactions with those people make us.

It's an interesting concept, and not wholly to be dismissed as the ravings of a man who's been dust for several millennia.

But.....sometimes, you need to walk along a beach, listen to the surroundings, watch the sun come up from behind the lifeguard shack, and let the rest slide away.

And try to hold onto the concept when there's no beach, no sun, and no lifeguard shack.

*Atrributed to Michaelangelo, roughly translated into, "I am still learning."