The reality of the tide

A few years ago, during a vacation on the Outer Banks of North Carolina (a place where my family and I go every couple of years), my children were playing with their cousins on the beach. I was taking photos as they frolicked in the gentle surf along the wide expanse of seemingly endless ocean. There were sea and beach creatures, along with colorful shells, that also caught my photo snapping attention.

Somewhere in the midst of my attempts at capturing as many “Kodak moments” as I could, I lost my footing and fell. The surf was not much of anything that day, but as I let my body fall into the sand, in the hope of keeping my camera out of the water, I couldn’t help but sense the pull of the tide. I didn’t get pulled far at all, but I could still feel the tide. Its gentle force was unmistakable.

There’s a similar force to the human condition, a sort of tidalness in how we gather, paying attention to certain things at one time and then not at all, but something else instead. The tide comes in. The tide goes out.