February 18th (World Whale Day),
Xavier Rudd’s song, “Follow the Sun”, came to mind as I walked through Dewey’s floaty sands
to the firmness of the water’s edge..
“When you feel life coming down on you,
Like a heavy weight
When you feel this crazy society,
Adding to the strain
Take a stroll to the nearest waters
And remember your place
Many moons have risen and fallen, long before you came”
Life is full of a spectrum of experiences, and I’ve learned along the way that feeling all
that I feel with radical acceptance is deeply healing. I recently listened to a shamanic healer in
Oregon say that humans usually have three fundamental impulses to life’s experiences; feeling,
thinking, and acting. What comes first of these three can be balanced with what comes last. As
soon as the tides within me began to rise in wake of my punching “you don’t have time for this”
thoughts, I turned to action with my camera, and began snapping photos of every pleasing
perspective that met my gaze. I needed action. Like the workout that I’d done before coming to
the ocean, it took quite a lot of time before I really warmed up, but when I did, something clicked
(literally with my cam, but mostly figuratively). I was seeing everything differently. As details
became more absorbent of my mind, winter’s gift of empty beaches gave the sounds of each
breaking wave an exhilarating depth.
Dewey Beach is less than 15 blocks long, and only a couple of blocks wide, with the
Atlantic on one side, and the Rehoboth Bay on the other. When the sunset lights up the bay,
glassy hues of pinks, oranges, yellows, reds and purples pour onto the patterned ocean sands. On
this lovely evening, the water began looking like a concoction of magical, liquid cotton candy. I
Shannon O’Neill
ENGL230
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took many intentional motions through in the sand, and peered backwards to see my footprints…
the past couldn’t be more tangible. The photos I took were like capturing grains of sand as time
continuously slipped through my hands. I began four rounds of ujjayi breathing (also known as
ocean’s breath), and the air that streamed through my lungs, and oxygenated my blood, enlivened
that precious, still, expansiveness in my mind. I was one with the endless sea that poured through
my eyes and into my subconscious. I’m pretty sure my mind turned blue.
I felt a re-rendering of loyalty to my homeland taking place in my spirit this evening. An
influx of gratitude struck me as I realized how lucky I am to be on earth right now. One day this
town could be gone due to sea level rise, but for now it is part of my purpose to synchronize my
actions with the highest good and health of myself and this planet. I try to lead in this way,
especially for the change I wish to see in Dewey. Each summer, the bars that saturate this town
throw away more plastic in a day then several people could consume in a lifetime. Plastic
decorates the south and eastern coasts of pacific islands like confetti because of the plastic people
all over the world, including here, throw away, but like most giant parties, this plastic one isn’t
going to end well. As written in food fight, the gnarly chemicals used in pesticides and herbicides
have hormone and endocrine disrupting chemicals, and plastics have these alarming sorts of
properties as well, and now they are bioaccumulating up the food chain to our dinner plates.
This small town seems to be a microcosm of a macrocosm in regards to profit
maximization over environmental protection, but I find peace in knowing that no matter how far
off track we get as a species, the steps we need to take to come back into balance will be there.
There’s a lot of thinking and acting going on within the big industries and political powers that
be, but I wonder if more feeling (specifically compassion) could evolve these enterprises.
Nevertheless, enjoying nature does wonders in reaffirming my peaceful guardianship for it.
Shannon O’Neill
ENGL230
Page 3
Great work!