At times the tides can be low with the seas pulled back from my shore, leaving an empty wet beach of flopping fish and half broken seashells and garbage mingling in the flotsam and jetsam amongst an almost barren terrain of foreign smells.

When in this low tide, I feel underwhelmed in life, not seen enough,  not heard enough, not understood enough, not known enough, not connected enough
not wanted enough. All the enoughs being never enough.

Then flip that, when the ocean is high and the waves are rugged and  crash hard with a splendor of driving  kinetic energy, when the universe seemingly has all its sights set upon me to thrive and live lively as a person could ever be, I live gloriously!

Life, throwing it all at me,  from the left , right, forward and behind, overwhelming me ,  surging, filling me full to bursting.
and then I do.

I think I have always had this rhythm in me, this cycling of not quite heaven and not quite hell and all the thoughts they bring.  A very fickle Melancholy

I don't want to feel sometimes because it all becomes too much to. One because I know it will end. That feeling.  It will  end, never to return and I will miss it.

At other times I want to feel it all, like a greedy child at a candy shop, mindful of all the sights, and feelings, and intimacies, soaking it in, in the moment, truly not a care for the future. I am filled with a  smile and laugh that lasts  forever in me in that moment..

I know I am a lucky man.  A very lucky man. So so lucky in my life compared to others.

So I hold to that thought.  That I am a lucky man.

The luckiest man that ever there was.

By Philip Wardlow September 12th, 2023