Blowing in the Wind

Every day just before sunrise I walked down to the beach to await the first light. I wanted to feel the stillness and get into a quiet state of meditation. On this day, I needed the answer to a question. Not just any question. A big one. What was I meant to be doing with my life?

I left my job as a sales manager in a car dealership because it felt hollow. The excitement of someone picking up a new car with a bow from the showroom was satisfying the first few times, but it lost its appeal after a few hundred. There had to be something more fulfilling. If there was, I hadn’t found it. I didn’t know what else I was good at. And my money was running out. I needed a job to keep a roof over my head. So, I began my morning ritual meditation to seek answers. I just got more questions. What brings you joy? What is your overarching purpose? How can you serve others? Until finally, why did your soul come here?

How the hell would I know?

I thought meditation was meant to change your life by giving you the answers, not serving up more questions. How did I know why my soul came to earth? Isn’t that something that should have made itself known when I was a child? Isn’t that what they say? What did you like to do when you were little? I can hardly remember my childhood, let alone the things I liked to do. I pretty much kept to myself. Listened to music. Read science fiction books. Nothing there to suggest my soul purpose.

I was walking to the sand to get ready to greet the new day and enter a meditation when I noticed everything was particularly dark, the sky thick with clouds. The moment I sat on my towel and crossed my legs to begin, the beach became darker and a strong wind whirred around me as though it had been waiting for me.

What could you be wanting to tell me? I thought. Am I crazy for thinking nature could speak to me? Indigenous cultures believe it. Why can’t I?

I closed my eyes and listened for words on the wind, or a random thought in my mind. Nothing. Just a howling. The wind blew more strongly and the howling became louder. Still no insights, just frustration. I tried to ignore the wind and meditate as normal, but the wind was making my heart race and distracting me from finding stillness in my mind. I opened my eyes. It was obvious there wouldn’t be a peaceful sunrise to create a backdrop for my meditation. It would be a grey, blowy morning at best. Why bother trying to meditate? Suddenly I wanted to go back to bed and shelter from what was surely an impending storm.

Maybe the wind was trying to tell me I was pushing too hard for an answer. It was certainly pushing against me as I tried to walk back to my friend’s holiday apartment that they’d let me use for a couple of weeks to ‘find myself’. Even nature was making life hard for me. I was nearly at the edge of the sand when I felt something stick to my leg. It was a piece of paper.

Now nature is throwing things at me. Luckily, it wasn’t a beer bottle.

I was about to discard the paper in the bin as its original owner should have done, when it occurred to me to inspect it more closely. I still wanted to believe that something greater than me might want me to know the answer to my question of what I was meant to do with my life.

Looking at it closely, the paper appeared to be crumpled. It contained a letter.

Maybe someone wrote the letter and decided not to send it. If they screwed it up and threw it on the beach, the wind must have unravelled it. How else would it have landed on my leg? What are the chances of it landing on me in any case. It’s such a big beach.

Cafes across the road were already open, so instead of going back to the apartment I decided to grab a coffee and watch the storm from a dry spot in the window. I folded the letter and pushed it into my pocket.

Why would someone throw away a letter? Was it something they needed to get off their chest and never intended to send it? Was it a rough draft for the real thing? Maybe I could deliver it to the person it was meant for. Is my purpose to deliver messages to people? A postman. Nah!

From my window spot, I gazed out at the beach, the wind whipping the waves into a fury and blasting the fronds of the palms that lined the street. I thought about the fate of postmen and women, who seemed to have all but lost their purpose in the digital age. As brought home to me long ago in David Brin’s 1980s post-apocalyptic dystopia novel The Postman, posties once had an important role in connecting people and helping them feel a sense of belonging. I wonder if any of them struggled with their purpose diminishing. Wanting to become posties from childhood and then technology taking it away from them one letter at a time. Maybe they were at a crossroads like me.

The young barista brought my long black to the table in an extra large mug. He was frowning.

“Hopefully your mood picks up once you’ve tasted our coffee,” he said.

“It may take more than coffee. Look at this weather.”

“I love storms. They bring a lot of energy through, clean things out and make space for change.”

“If you say so.” I took a sip of the coffee. “Wow, mate, this is amazing.”

The barista pulled his mouth and nodded as though he’d known one taste would be all it took. He went back behind the counter.

My thoughts returned to the discarded letter in my pocket. With the coffee in front of me, I felt ready to read it and even discover something about the author. I put the now-folded letter on the table. The creases and bumps of the dirty paper made it look rejected and unwanted. Was that me? Stumbling around in the world with no purpose and no place to be, discarded and blown around by the wind? Did I really want to know what was inside? Maybe it held a doomsday message that would fill me with all the horror of the post-apocalyptic world of that Brin novel. Just the memory of it was making me feel dread. And I had enough worry about my future without fiction, or this letter, making it worse.

Maybe this was a bad idea. Curiosity killed the cat and all that. Am I just being a coward? My own worst enemy? Just read the damn thing!

I took another sip of the aromatic dark liquid and unfolded the crumpled paper. I held my breath.

Dear future self

You have been going through a rough time and I wanted to let you know that you’re going to be all right.  

You have survived dark nights of the soul in the past and this one is no different. You will come out the other side once the storm has passed with renewed hope and purpose.

You are meant to write. You have been a reader for so long. Now it’s time to put all those thoughts of yours into words on a page for others to read.

If you don’t believe me, look out for a rainbow. It will be your sign.

Always

Your number one cheerleader

The tears were streaming down my face. I had written this letter to myself after my first sunrise beach meditation nearly two weeks before. Immediately, I had doubted the insights, scrunched it up and thrown it on the beach in frustration. As the wind now blew through the palms and whipped up the waves, I knew I didn’t need a rainbow for proof of what I was meant to do when the storm had passed. In fact, I wouldn’t even wait for the storm to pass. I would bring my laptop back to this window spot and write with the wind blowing around me.