Installment #3 of visual representation(s) of current ruminations. Let the waves roll.

Some of the most frequently uttered phrases I heard during the last year contained the word “wave.”

“I am overwhelmed by waves of sadness.” “I was flooded by a wave of rage.” “I can barely keep in check the waves of despair.” “Fear comes and goes in waves, night and day.” These are all, mind you, not just reactions to personal illness but communal response to the events in the world, our 12 months-long exposure to serious isolation, to threats to our health and livelihoods, to the acknowledgement that mental health is at stake as much as anything else. And that’s before we even get to politics…

Waves, in these contexts, describe an onslaught by a powerful force, ready to bowl you over, if not drown you. Yet if you asked me about my spontaneous associations to waves, they would be primarily positive.

There are the gentle waves lapping at the shore at sunset during a perfect beach get-away.

There are the waves that steadily, across millennia, chisel away at seemingly unsurmountable obstacles. A soft but patient force producing change in a hard substance, relentlessly opening space that seemed impenetrable. Channels are carved that allow for flow rather than blockage.

Waves leave beauty behind, in constellations and patterns, in scars and markings that tell tales of survival and resistance.

And then there are the waves of my childhood summers at the North Sea. I cannot adequately describe the joy that a little girl experienced at the pure physicality of jumping into the waves, letting them pummel you, resisting your small body and swallowing it at the same time. I never participated in sports, and had few outlets to let the body rip, except peddling my bike at top speed. Waves allowed you to throw yourself around, wildly thrashing limbs, leaning in, ducking under, rolling and diving. Once a little further out they carried you in sinusoidal motion, lying on your back while ignoring parental yelling to come back, being rocked like an infant, water brushing against all that skin that was usually covered neck to toe. Feeling body without shame and hesitation, calmed by fluidity all around you, but also thrilled by your own daring.

Perhaps we can focus on that perspective, then, a reappraisal of the power of these waves. They can serve us just as they can overwhelm. Those waves of anger will need millions of years before they grind us down, the waves of sadness soften us to feel what we once blocked. The waves that scar us are the same that cradle us until we are ready to move on. Moving on to waves of joy, of gratitude, of re-immersion onto sounder footing. And before I get lost in sermonizing, let’s remember you can always rent a boat! Preferably the one envisioned by Ravel, gliding through some of the most beautiful waves music has ever produced.