Category Archives: Original Essays

Back (Trouble) to Back (At It)

Posted on September 23, 2023 | Leave a comment
September 23, 2023

Is it fair to say you are a runner if you don’t actually run?

I ran a mile this morning. It has been 262 days since I ran that far, but who’s counting, huh?

On January 4, 2023, while living in Carlinville, Illinois, I went for a run in the early morning darkness. It was a familiar run to the Square, still decorated with festive holiday lights, and I noticed a pain in my left leg different from the typical getting older pains. Instead of making a good decision, I chose to tough it out and finish the three-mile run, but by the time I arrived home I realized that was a mistake.

I did not seek any medical advice, because how silly would that be, right? I chose limping instead. More accurately, I thought “rest” solved everything, so I tried to rest it out. That didn’t work. Eventually, I poorly described how I felt in a casual conversation with my friend, Abby, an athletic trainer, who thought it sort of sounded like IT band trouble. I responded with what seemed smart: a morning stretching routine; working on my core, and doing some cardio on an exercise bike. I truly thought that was going to help. It didn’t.

In mid-April, I secretly flew to L.A. for a job interview and took a redeye home, which led to an uncomfortable night crammed into an airplane seat. Not long afterward, I discovered the worst lower back pain of my life; so painful, in fact, that I actually listened to my wife’s advice to visit a chiropractor, which don’t tell Jody this part, but that was the first good choice I had made in all of this. It turns out that it wasn’t my leg or my IT band at all; instead, I had some spinal issues that desperately needed addressing.

Months later, with the critical help of chiropractors in Illinois and now California, slowly (and with an emphasis on slowly), this morning, I went to Zuma Beach and ran a mile. All to say, I’m happy today. Still a long way to go, like the ancient Lao Tzu quote about a thousand-mile journey starting with an itsy-bitsy step, although I’m not sure Lao Tzu actually said itsy-bitsy, but you get the drift.

Today’s little milestone could have been depressing instead, I guess. My pace was terrible, less Noah Lyles and more Noah shuffling the elephants around the Ark. It actually seems that I am racing faster through my middle-age years than I did at Zuma this morning, and that could be a downer to someone who once did not question whether it was okay to call himself a runner.

But.

I remember a story about the great hall-of-fame baseball catcher, Roy Campanella, after his terrible automobile accident in 1958 that left him paralyzed just before the Dodgers played their first season in Los Angeles. Whoever told the story mentioned seeing a PT nurse toss a little toy ball to Campy and his struggle to catch a ball that a toddler could catch. A hall-of fame catcher struggling to catch a toy. But you know what, Campy kept trying to catch that ball while writing a book that he titled, It’s Good to Be Alive.

So, dadgum it, call me a runner. I am a runner that ran a mile today. And when I did, with plenty of time to think about it, I thought: It’s good to be alive.

January 4, 2023

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Feeling Free

Posted on September 17, 2023 | Leave a comment

I was born on Mexican Independence Day, Mexico’s Fourth of July, but for over half a century now, other than an annual “Happy Mexican Independence Day!” from my good friends, Hung, Corinne, and Kate, I have never combined the two celebrations—until yesterday when Jody and I drove to Downtown Los Angeles to spend the afternoon on Olvera Street.

Olvera Street is special. To share straight from its website, “Olvera Street, known as ‘the birthplace of Los Angeles,’ is a Mexican Marketplace that recreates a romantic ‘Old Los Angeles’ with a block-long narrow, tree-shaded, brick-lined market with old structures, painted stalls, street vendors, cafes, restaurants, and gift shops.” If that sounds lovely, the reality is even better, and it struck me as a terrific place to celebrate my birthday and Mexican Independence Day.

On the sixteenth day of September in 1810, Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costillo spoke to his little parish church in central Mexico and urged them to fight for independence from Spain, which led to his execution a year later and over a decade of fighting, but ultimately, an independent Mexico. And yesterday, 213 years after his initial “Cry of Dolores,” beautiful families gathered together, children danced in festive costumes, and Mexican flags flew proudly in the City of Angels.

It was not our first time to visit Olvera Street, but it was our first since returning for Part Two of our California adventure, and during yesterday’s visit I recalled that familiar and wonderfully unsettling sensation of feeling like a tourist in your own homeland. I have come to relish that feeling.

Now, given my personal appearance, I rarely look around any place and get the feeling that I fit in exactly. On certain dramatic occasions, like wandering through an Indian bazaar high in the Himalayas or briskly walking down a side street in Nairobi, the gawks and smiles of locals showed how apparent this was to everyone, but I feel out of place in all sorts of locations, like the cosmetics aisle of any department store, or to be honest, Bass Pro Shops.

But as I said, in a certain way, I now find that feeling almost intoxicating.

Independence absolutely has a dark side, including the colonizing mindset that views your independent self as God’s gift to unfortunate people not like you, but I felt independent in a good way walking through Olvera Street on Saturday—independent in the sense that I am not contained by familiarity, at least not anymore.

I’m not sure that I’m making sense, so let me try it this way: I felt both humbled and alive on Olvera Street yesterday, humbled and alive with the fascination of this beautifully diverse planet on which we live, and the realization that the differences all around me are better embraced than critiqued, and that in that sense—the sense of the heart—“my” people can be “all” people.

I hope that you enjoyed your Mexican Independence Day, too!

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I’d Like You to Meet Cross Country

Posted on September 9, 2023 | Leave a comment

Given 4,000+ miles of moves back and forth across the country just in the past five years, it stands to reason that I would love a sport called “cross country.” Now I love all sorts of sports, but with all due respect—and you would never know this from watching ESPN or reading the sports page—cross country absolutely crosses the finish line in first place.

I can see that you have a different opinion. That’s okay, your being wrong will in no way prevent us from being friends. Just know that I’m not alone. Writer/speaker/podcaster-extraordinaire, Malcolm Gladwell put it this way: “I won’t belabor the obvious about cross country. It is insanely fun. Races take place during the glory days of fall. The courses are typically in beautiful parts of the country. Cross country meets don’t feel like sporting events; they feel like outdoor festivals—except everyone is fit, as opposed to high. Everyone should be so lucky as to run cross country.”

That’s what I’m talking about.

My introduction to cross country came in the fall of 1985 when Coach Watson came to our high school cafeteria and asked several of us, “Hey, do you want to run cross country?” We said, “Sure,” not knowing what it was, but knowing that we liked Coach Watson and that it sounded like something to do, and with no actual training or meets in advance, we traveled to a town called Arkadelphia and came home with a state runner-up plaque. That’s a pretty cool way to meet a sport.

Sadly, I lost touch with the sport for a couple of decades or so, but another random encounter with a coach, this time “Coach Rad” at Pepperdine, who invited me to be a volunteer chaplain for his men’s and women’s teams, allowed me to fall in love again. I got to hang out with the coolest kids and tag along on early morning runs in spectacular locations, and more importantly, have a front row seat to witness what makes endurance running special, i.e., the human capacity to push through pain and discover a better version of yourself. A few years later, incredibly, while at Blackburn College, I got to be a college cross country coach myself! What fun it was to spend even more time with inspiring young people and watch them grow.

This weekend, I discovered myself back in Malibu, clear a-“cross country” once again, thinking about my favorite sport. On Friday evening, I was on my computer tracking my friends at Blackburn as they competed in Illinois, and on Saturday morning I was in person at Alumni Park to cheer on the Waves. On both occasions, I noticed that I was smiling.

I guess I’m just happy and felt compelled to share my cross country testimony today. You don’t have to be a cross country fan. I promise that I won’t hold it against you. If beauty and camaraderie and courage and fresh air and holistic health and resilience and smiling in general just aren’t your things, I hear that a sedentary lifestyle is pretty popular these days?

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Take a Hike

Posted on September 2, 2023 | 4 comments

My wife and I are proof that opposites attract and can even be happily married forever (twenty-nine years and counting!). Our differences provide some independence, which we count as a strength; however, we battle against being too independent, so we periodically have ideas as to how we might do something together—not something mine or hers, but ours. The latest idea is hiking.

Oh, we have hiked off and on over the years in various parts of these United States, but intentional, regular hiking is a new adventure for us. We plan to target some spectacular part of Southern California once a month, and today was our first.

There’s a joke about camping as rich people pretending to be homeless, which I considered last night as I removed tags from the new hiking apparel we purchased at the super-hip store for outdoors enthusiasts, REI, which I also learned does not technically stand for Really Expensive Items (Recreational Equipment, Incorporated, but who knew?). This morning I slipped on my new forest-green REI hiking pants and my new black Salomon Speedcross 6 trail shoes and off we went to the Santa Ynez Mountains of Santa Barbara.

Because we are just getting started and not in great shape, we chose a “moderate” hike, and I’m sure that in some level of hell the four miles and 800-feet of elevation we encountered could be described as moderate, so I won’t quibble. But we struggled. When it comes to sure-footedness, I, for one, have the clumsy coordination of a baby giraffe. We were passed twice by the same young trail runner going up and down the trail we hoped to conquer once and felt a little intimidated by the parents carrying small children on their backs as well as the two guys carrying their mountain bikes up a switchback. We climbed, slowly, toward our destination, Inspiration Point, and I did discover inspiration on the journey: I felt a strong inspiration to curse. I felt inspired to consider a different activity to do together. I often felt inspired to stop.

But my goodness it turned out to be incredible. Somewhere between a heavy mist and a light rain accompanied us as we hiked our way up into the puffy, saturated clouds, and we reveled in the mesmerizing sound of nature, which included the breathtaking sound of silence. Slowly, deliberately, we climbed, and when we finally reached Inspiration Point, we discovered that we had it all to ourselves, which felt appropriate, since our initial inspiration was to do it for ourselves anyway.

I am embarrassed to say that I rarely touch the actual planet that we live on. My feet touch pavement and concrete, carpet and hardwood flooring, tile and vinyl, laminate and linoleum, but how often do I come into contact with Mother Earth? Not often enough. Not. Often. Enough.

But the best part of a remarkable day? Holding hands when the trail was wide enough. Simple conversations. Making each other laugh. Cheering each other on. Sharing spectacular scenes together. Feeling less alone in this world. Feeling more connected to each other, not to mention the universe.

We’ll be doing this again. And again, and again.

Don’t be offended, but if you asked us for a little marital advice, we’d tell you to take a hike.

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An Emma Lazarus Poem in the Heart of Malibu

Posted on August 27, 2023 | 1 comment

She was disruptive, to say the least. A woman, scowling, mentally unstable, stalked the parking lot like a cornered tiger, roaring words at full volume toward the universe, at least half-threatening, and seemingly half-afraid. We were celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the Malibu Community Labor Exchange with a big fiesta, complete with delicious food from Kristy’s, a troupe performing traditional Oaxacan dances in festive costumes, and a highly-energetic mariachi band. But, as I mentioned, she was disruptive, to say the least.

Some tried to help, appropriately, and unsuccessfully. At times, her behavior escalated toward a possible physical confrontation, and several of the workers on hand rose and drew near like tender bouncers, ready to assist. Oscar, a friend and protégé of the legendary Cesar Chavez, who for six days a week for thirty years now—that’s something like nine thousand times—has driven to Malibu from South Central Los Angeles to direct the center and handle situations exactly like this one, stood close, observing, listening, caring. At the conclusion of the dance performance, the teenage dancers shared a special dance involving pineapples, which triggered a barrage of the verbal outbursts, but the young dancers kept their composure and performed flawlessly, while occasionally darting an eye to the woman lurking at stage left. But nothing stopped the beauty of the night; and, in fact, the uncomfortable interruptions seemed somehow to complete a full picture of the three decades of the Labor Exchange in Malibu: humanity, in all its complicated forms.

I loved being there alongside workers and supporters, as always, and at night’s end was talking to Oscar who, speaking of the woman, leaned in to share with that trademark magical twinkle in his eye like he is witnessing special things in the universe: “Do you know what she shared with me when she left? She said, kindly, ‘Oscar, thank you for tonight.’”

As she stalked out into the night, alone, she said, Thank you.

I know there are many ways of making sense of the universe, but I happen to be a follower of Jesus. I have often thought of the Malibu Community Labor Exchange as a modern version of the story that Jesus told about the Rich Man and Lazarus, but at the party on Saturday night, the scene was more like the wild story where a man called Legion because of his many demons screamed and screamed at Jesus in a cemetery—or a later version where a follower named Paul had a similar encounter with a woman in Greece. In those stories, the demons got tossed out. I really wish that I could toss out her demons, too.

In the meantime, I am glad to know that there is a place right here in Malibu that is willing to offer patient hospitality to those battling demons who accept an open invitation to the party.

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

– By Emma Lazarus, from The New Colossus

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Legal Education

Posted on August 19, 2023 | 6 comments

I answer Student Affairs when asked my profession and Higher Education as my industry. That’s how I see the last dozen years of my life, but the truth is I didn’t realize that Student Affairs was a profession until I joined it. My introduction to this profession came at my very own law school immediately following graduation and bar exam at the unconventional age of forty, but I have had the pleasure and opportunity to engage in such work at two other institutions of higher education since. But now, pun pathetically intended, I have returned to the scene of the crime to work in student affairs in a law school setting,

My law school colleagues use another term of art: Legal Education. That has always cracked me up. We’ll say that we work in legal education, like all the other education forms are illegal education. I enjoy the work. I have enjoyed all three of my professional stops in higher education, but having survived the unique ordeal of law school myself, I feel extra helpful here. So maybe I should just say that my field is Student Affairs with a bit of a specialty in law.

For those unfamiliar, I am not faculty. The academic classroom is the faculty habitat and the centerpiece of higher education, but student affairs professionals are the folks that complement the academic mission of a college/university/professional school by nurturing the formation of mind, body, and spirit in the students outside of the classroom. I love what I get to do.

We just finished “Launch Week” at the Caruso School of Law. It was the tenth annual Launch Week, which was especially fun since I was involved in launching Launch Week a decade ago. As one might hope, others have taken what we started and continued to make it better and better. The original idea was to blow up “new student orientation,” which always sounded sort of optional, and dive into law school on Day One. It was an awesome week. The new students were noticeably engaged and professional, and the upper-division students that volunteered as mentors were outstanding, most returning to pay forward their past experience as brand-new students.

Yesterday, just after the new students’ first real law school classes, we gathered on Pepperdine’s breathtaking Alumni Park overlooking the Pacific Ocean for a barbecue to close out the week. And since I left, the student government added a little friendly competition among the class sections to the festivities, which included a Giant Jenga war, an actual tug-of-war, and finally, a little dodgeball. Law students can be the least bit competitive, and they got into it, but consistent with the DNA of this particular law school, they got into it with laughter and cheering for one another.

I took pictures and was especially proud of a few I snagged from the Jenga throwdown, where it struck me that it might provide a decent metaphor for what is to come. Deep, particular concentration was required of the students as they worked to dismantle and build upon something that seemed pretty sturdy in the first place, and with each passing moment the pressure of falling apart continued to mount. Sounded a little like law school to me. But the students kept delivering, one after the other, while their colleagues and mentors constantly cheered them on.

And then your whole world comes crashing down. Ha! That was a joke! Okay, maybe the metaphor isn’t perfect.

But my profession believes that you can learn some valuable lessons outside of the classroom, too. Even playing Giant Jenga.

Leslie was selected to be the student speaker at her law school graduation in 2015. I have always remembered something that she said: “A lot of people make lawyer jokes, but when your world falls apart, nobody calls a comedian.” This week, 185 impressive humans began their study of law here in Malibu, and it is an honor to be a part of the team that walks alongside them, complementing their formal studies, cheering them on, being there for the challenges that arise, caring for their wellbeing and personal development, and watching them transform into the people that you do call on in your darkest hour. That, my friends, is how I see my work in Student Affairs in Legal Education. What an honor.

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Evening at the Improv

Posted on August 13, 2023 | 2 comments

Memories are funny, no pun intended, but thirty-plus years ago, sitting in a tiny college apartment, I watched a hilarious Howie Mandel show on television. The popular stand-up comic, while on a circular stage for his special, stopped a young woman attempting to leave for the restroom, questioned her from the stage, and embarrassed her thoroughly; then, once she left, had everyone in her section exchange seats with everyone in the corresponding section on the opposite side of the stage and then went back to his routine. Five or ten minutes later, the camera panned to a very confused woman who returned from the bathroom unable to recognize absolutely anyone from her section. Of course, Mandel stopped his routine and made her life miserable again.

Two thoughts remain decades later: Number one, genius. Number two, avoid live comedy shows.

Last night, however, in a moment of weakness, my wife and I went to a show at the famed Hollywood Improv on Melrose. We were basically the first to arrive and took a tall table in the waiting area where we were surrounded by portraits of epic comedians: Joan Rivers. Richard Pryor. Steve Martin. All the legends. A small crowd of fellow early birds soon joined us, and when the time came to line up and head in, you would have thought my wife was flying Southwest what with her sprint to the front of the line. So, we were seated first, where the following exchange occurred:

Host: Where would you like to sit?

Wife (turning to repeat the question to me): Where would you like to sit? (note: very thoughtful)

Me: Totally up to you, Sweetheart. (note: always the correct response)

This was followed by Jody taking us to the front row where it was obvious we would be able to look up the nostrils of the comedians as they stood in our laps. Old Howie Mandel memories came flooding back as I broke out in a quiet sweat.

I am pleased to report that it turned out great. We were joined by two equally-terrified-to-be-sitting-on-the-front-row young women in town from El Paso, Texas, and we just had a great time. Counting the cold opener and the host, there were eight comedians spread over two straight hours of laughter, and I thought they were all fantastic. Our seatmates got put on the hot seat once, but we were surprisingly spared the spotlight all evening. Apparently, I am so boring that even eight consecutive comedians took multiple looks at a strange/tall/bald man directly in their face and said, Um, we’re going to pass on that one. For once in my life, I didn’t mind at all.

I got to thinking on the way home: I am happy that there are places in the world where you can go just to laugh. When Jim Valvano gave his inspirational/dying speech at the original ESPYs, of the three things he said everyone should do every day, he said, “Number one is laugh.”

Now not everyone loved every part of the show. Afterward, in the valet parking line, what appeared to be an elderly mother escorted by her son was making it clear that she did not appreciate certain comedians AT ALL, but you know, it seems to me, and you have every right to disagree, that sometimes comics find a way to say out loud what many think but are afraid to say, and in so doing help others discover that they aren’t alone in the world after all. And what a relief that is – not to be alone.

We’ll be back for another Evening at the Improv, and I might not be so lucky next time. But if that’s the case, maybe I’ll bump into that unfortunate soul from the Howie Mandel show and we’ll have a good laugh about it together.   

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The Last Bookstore

Posted on August 5, 2023 | 2 comments

“A book is a dream that you hold in your hand.” – Neil Gaiman

I went to The Last Bookstore today. Not to worry, that’s just its name. If you are curious about the name, the owner opened his independent bookstore when physical bookstores were closing all over and thought, Well, maybe I’ll just open one more anyway. That was nearly twenty years ago, and the store has now grown to 22,000 square feet. Take that, Bezos.

So yeah, I drove thirty-eight miles, one way, through summer beach traffic and into swarming Downtown Los Angeles just to go to a bookstore. What, you might ask, would cause a person to drive thirty-eight miles, one way, through summer beach traffic and into swarming Downtown Los Angeles just to go to a bookstore? Well, it’s a cool bookstore. To wit: I arrived ten minutes before the doors opened at eleven, and there was a line. Some were there, I’m sure, for its Instagram popularity, ironically, but most appeared to be my people. Book people. Awkward, strange, beautiful book people.

You should know that me and my people, and this is hard to explain, think that a bookstore is a place where invisible magic happens. We really do. Good magic, mostly, so as you’d might expect, we’d rather be there than most any place around, except possibly our own special reading spots where we take the treasures we find in a bookstore. At the bookstore, we wander slowly through the stacks believing that magic is happening all around us. We’re searching for our own magic, so we do an odd little dance, sideways shuffling down the stacks, rarely making eye contact with our fellow citizens and wordlessly exchanging places with one another like a clumsy do-si-do, respecting the magic that we know is flirting with our fellow readers, too.

We believe and do all of this because our lives have been changed, magically, in a bookstore. We have been transported back in time, and I’m talking literally, and if you don’t know what I mean, then I can’t explain it to you. We have discovered new worlds that we had never imagined and now can’t live without. We have found ourselves in a bookstore, including soulmates that were dead before we arrived on this planet but who now live with us, magically. We have lived the lives of many others, too, vicariously. Maybe vicariously. Sometimes it is hard to tell.

I went to The Last Bookstore today and left with two new treasures: Box Socials by W.P. Kinsella, and Morgan’s Passing by Anne Tyler. At the checkout, with a line behind me, the staff member wanted to talk about Anne Tyler. We talked about our favorite Anne Tyler books, and for a few moments, we seemed to forget that this was actually a place of business. Probably because we knew it was much more.

So, I’ll be back, traffic be damned. Although I may take the subway next time since I noticed that The Last Bookstore is very close to the Pershing Square station. That way I can read a book.

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Back Behind the Wheel

Posted on July 27, 2023 | 2 comments

I was born with a lazy eye. It’s the left one if you want to direct your derision at its lethargy appropriately.

“Lazy eye” is officially called amblyopia and afflicts approximately 1-2% of humanity, including celebrities known for their beauty such as Ryan Gosling and Heidi Klum, alongside unfamous people not known for their beauty, like me. Amblyopia can typically be corrected if discovered in small children, which mine was not, meaning that I have been legally blind in my left eye my entire life. If you are curious, it has peripheral vision, but a member of the alphabet would need to be the size of a linebacker for accurate identification.

Not searching for sympathy here: Since it’s a lifelong condition, I only know my way of seeing the world and have gotten along just fine. I was known as a decent outside shooter on the basketball court. I could tell that my wife is really pretty right away. I even once found Waldo. And I had no problem securing driver’s licenses in Arkansas, Mississippi, California, Tennessee, and Illinois—until I moved back to California, that is.

It turns out that the California DMV modified its vision standards since I moved away, and when I visited early last week, I was told to visit an optometrist. (Side note: Driving home after said eye exam through a winding canyon while squinting through a dilated working eye led to some reflection on what I assume was the motivation behind the new standard. But I digress.) Afterward, a return trip to the DMV with the completed form led to the discovery that I had to take a behind-the-wheel driving test for the first time since the mid-1980s. Which happened yesterday.

Let’s begin by saying that, yes, I think I had all the nerves of the teenagers taking the test with me, maybe more. If you fail the test as a teenager, I assume your parents offer comfort and a stop for cheeseburgers. I, on the other hand, might have to sell my car immediately and Uber home.

Well, the time came, and my driving critic was a young man that looked suspiciously like Sal from Impractical Jokers, which did make me wonder about the entire ordeal. It also occurred to me that I was probably teaching people to drive before he was old enough to learn, but since I was actively engaged in combat with militant butterflies, I just focused on the driving.

Me and Sal (not his real name) rode in silence, and I tried to remember all the things: hands at eight and four; constant looking over your shoulder like a bobblehead; using turn signals months before you actually turn; driving faster than the joggers but slower than everyone else; and so on. If you perform what is known as a critical error, you instantly fail; if not, you must have under twenty points to pass. I am pleased to report no critical errors and just five points marked, so I made it. I celebrated by taking my own self to In-N-Out for a cheeseburger.

I am the most defensive driver I know, and believe me I felt a little defensive when required to take a behind-the-wheel test. I guess I could hate on California, or the DMV, or government bureaucracy in general. And, well, yes, and sure. Or I guess I could look for a silver lining like learning something new (very little) or fun conversations with new people (didn’t happen). Instead, I guess that sometimes, when life seems unfair, the only thing you get out of it is some real-life practice in endurance and patience.

I suspect you are facing something much more unfair and challenging, or will. If so, hang in there, do your best, and know that I am rooting for you to pass, too. And when you do, I suggest treating yourself to a double-double combo (protein-style) like I did.

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Some Things Never End

Posted on July 24, 2023 | 2 comments

There are multiple reasons to keep me away from the ocean. My unusual skeletal assortment of joints and angles constitutes a complex geometric equation that results in, once you add water, the buoyancy of a bowling ball. That’s a big one. Another is that my complexion is reminiscent of a sheet of notebook paper. When I walk on a midday beach, I hear a faint sizzle and picture God as a grill-master in the sky with a giant spatula and one of those aprons that says, License to Grill. Years ago, my wife and I went to Cabo for a wedding anniversary and rented a beach bed, which sounded lovely until I discovered it had slats instead of a canopy cover. She turned around from tanning in her beach chair to discover me levitating in a sideways plank on the side of the bed in an attempt to find shade in the shadow of a two-by-four. (I’m skinny, so it wasn’t as crazy as it sounds.)

And yet, baffling though it may be, I love the ocean. I love the foamy waves and the constant roar. I love the pelicans diving for dinner and the surf crashing on the rocks. I love the ocean breeze and the peculiar aroma. I love the seashells and the seaweed, and the helplessly happy humans at play. I never saw an ocean until college, but hell, my first cassette purchase in high school was Billy Ocean (“Love Zone”), so maybe it was destiny.

Now let me be clear: I don’t need to be in it, on it, or under it. I admire the seafarers and the surfers, but they aren’t me, and I am not even slightly jealous. My love is suited for the sidelines, so give me the times when normal people are less likely to be there, say a sunrise or a sunset, and a lazy walk or simply staring at the grace of it all.

I’m not exactly sure what would make a pasty sink-hazard adore the ocean, but I am far from alone—just head to any beach and see who shows up. I think it has something to do with the dream of a life without limits. That there is something beyond comprehension out there, beyond what we see, that endlessly keeps reminding us, through all our senses, that there is more than we can ever know. Yes, I think that is what it is for me at least.

Last night, at sunset, my wife and I sat in Adirondack chairs gazing at the Pacific Ocean as the crowds dispersed for the day. She joked, “What time do you think they’ll turn off the waves?” I simply smiled in silence and considered the grace in believing that some good things never end.

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