Perspective

I've always loved looking at a pier from underneath.  I love the barnacles stuck to the wood and knowing that the whole thing is held up by the beams and it's just this symbol of strength.  It holds everything up so that we can walk out into the ocean safely for a little ways.  As if being at the water's edge isn't enough.  We have to experience being out there farther.  Just a little more.  I would look at those columns and wonder how deep they had to be in the ground to support the pier and if the sand washing in and around them every day ever washed down that far to move anything around.  Living in California I also wondered if earthquakes could move them too.  It never hurts to look at things differently does it?  Even when it comes to piers.  From underneath they are beautiful too.  In Santa Monica you can go down under it at the end and see the fish and porpoises playing down there.  It was honestly my favorite part of going to the end.  Examining things is important to understanding them.  We can find the beauty in a lot of ways.  It adds to the experience somehow.  I know a pier is a feat of engineering that I won't ever fully understand.  I know what it looks like underneath though and I know how I feel when I look at it.  I admire those people who build them.  I admire people who look at them and see how amazing they are from every angle.  

I can look at things one way only or look at them from every angle.  Examine them.  Socrates said, at his trial after he chose death rather than exile, that "The unexamined life is not worth living".   I get that.  When every day feels like the one before something needs to change or we're just taking up space.  I've looked at my life from all angles.  There were times I got into doing things that were boring and repetitive but in the back of my mind I always heard the waves and the sound they make on the beach.  It never stops and you could argue that it's repetitive and boring.  I'll never see it that way.  To me it's life.  The sound I love.  Pushing forward and pulling back.  Perspective is everything.  How we see something is paramount to how we continue living.  

I can give up and choose to let my child's death engulf me in pain for the rest of my life or I can feel that ebbing of the waves wash over me and breathe a deep sigh as I watch it all unfold.  I feel at peace because I know she still exists in a world of light and love.  I envy her.  I can often hear her say to me "I know something you don't know" in the sing song of a little girl.  She knows the answer to the great mystery of our world.  What happens when we die?  She is now the teacher and I'm the student.  Perspective.