There are few places on this Earth that I can stand and find that people I will never meet are compelled to wave to me. I went sailing a few weeks back and as we pulled out of the harbor, sure enough, people on the shore began to wave to me. Not just children, but adults too.
Why is it that we stand at the shore and wave to people on boats? Where does this impulse originate? Do we all cast our eyes out to those upon the water and feel a pull of something primal. Something seeded with in our roots that tells us that we owe our cultural origins to those first explorers who ventured out across the deep blue sea.
Why do some of us feel that we belong to the sea. It’s clear that we can’t live underwater…. Well, not till my fantasy of some sort of underwater super society becomes a reality. So why do I feel this way when I’m swimming in the ocean, or on a boat looking down into the unknown. I gaze longingly down into the only domain of this world that we humans cannot inhabit. I feel so connected to my history, my ancestors, my genetic origins.
Such is our romance with the sea that bore life to our planet, that as a species, we yearn to be forever at her side.
We crowd ourselves into pockets of fertile land that line her shores.
Sleeping cosy in houses nested close to the crushing roar of her breaking tide.
Her deep mysterious waters provide a bounty of life that has enabled us to survive in some of the most remote and harsh landscapes on this planet.
However, with the slightest wave of her rippling blue skin, she has time and again wiped whole cities clean away.
Yet, back we scurry to be close once again.
Such is our romance.
The oceans gave us life, and we are eternally dependent upon them…and though we cannot live beneath the surface, it is by no means safe from our destructive touch. Just like every other ecosystem on the planet, we are told how we are killing it.
Bite the hand that feeds you, burn the ones you love…such is the way of romance.
Shell Child – Author 