I saw a graffiti from the bus today, saying
If the ocean wants you, it takes you.
I thought that was a fucking cool thing to write on a wall.
An unusual thing.
It stuck with me, as I went. Some days, I don't feel like being on my phone much, and I find I like myself a lot more on those days. Just sitting there and looking out, having one conversation at one time, instead of a million. Today was a day like that.
If the ocean wants you, it takes you.
It's a weird thing to say in a country that mostly knows the sea. If the sea wants you, it takes you, too. You get caught in a riptide, and you either die, or you get lucky. Or maybe the sea didn't want you bad enough?
You make your own luck, I suppose, which reminds me of a great podcast I listened to the other day. I love Joe, have been watching him for years, and while I've always enjoyed the silliness, as well as the more serious stuff, I was very pleasantly surprised by this episode. How infectious the man's enthusiasm for life.
If the ocean wants you, it takes you.
See, I don't know how much I believe that, in real life. I'm too much the kind of person who thinks you make your own luck (or lack thereof). You have to move in tandem with the ocean, I don't think it's a matter either of being taken or leading too much, you know.
I liked that about Joe.
The way he talked, how easy he made it feel. How he never once entertained the idea that it might not be worth going after what he wanted, how easy he made believing in yourself seem. I think it's easy, too, and in many ways, tend to see life the same way.
Present yourself to the world in such a way as you want to be perceived.
Obviously, it doesn't work in every situation. But I think it goes a whole lot further than we let on. I think we underestimate the power of thinking you can do certain things, and how important it is to take yourself seriously (albeit not too seriously) even before others do.
Sure, believing in yourself alone isn't gonna get you where you wanna go completely, but it's a good first step, and besides, what have you got to lose?
I think I made a good deal of the life I have (and implicitly, the life I wanted) real by not quite considering an alternative, too.
Many years ago, someone asked me what I'd do with myself if money wasn't an issue, and I said write. I hadn't considered money much, which I guess in ways reflects in my life. And he said,
"That's the difference between you and me. You know. And you have no idea how valuable that is."
It's true, I don't think I did, at the time. I thought I was waiting on the shore, in a way, but even then, I was already so deep in, already at work playing with it, myth-making, modelling myself.
If the ocean wants you, it takes you.
But you've gotta open yourself to being taken, also. To entering that dance. How much belief does it take?
We talk a lot about how much money. How much money do I need to afford this or that.
Well, I'm wondering. How much belief do I need to get the life I want? How much do I gotta believe to survive in the ocean, to be taken by the ocean?
Every fucking day.
I've thought, since very early on, that the ocean wanted me. Don't ask me how. It was just the kind of knowledge you wake up with one day, I suppose. And I went playing with it. I still go playing with it. And it seems I'm not the only one.
What a fucking joy. What a relief to find a life such as this. To write this during the storm. To swim in the possibility of a future I'm actively at work making for myself.
