Gathering Shells
“Life is a beach.”
That line is probably printed on millions upon millions of tacky shirts, mugs, and chotchkies globally. However, beneath the corny veneer, there’s truth to be found.
If you walk along a beach for long enough your eyes will eventually be drawn from the horizon to where the gaze naturally falls, which is the water line rushing and disappearing into the diverse blend of stones, sand, and flotsam. What follows is equally natural – the innate desire to collect the finest of what the ocean gives up to the shoreline. Each and every one of us has a perfect stone or shell in our mind’s eye, and the frenetic search on an otherwise peaceful coastline begins. We bend excitedly at the waist to collect our treasures, gathering what appears to be the closest resemblance to our mythical item. We gingerly place them in a place of safekeeping, without much of a plan for what they will become (unless you’re this guy). We fervently hunt, seeking out that specific, grandiose gift from the sea, and while it’s not found the first lesson of the beach is:
How could we possibly expect to find that exact, fictional shell while standing at one of a billion junctures between land and sea, with the latter being more unknown than the entire universe?
The answer is simple: We must relinquish the expectation of finding what can’t be found and instead realize that the opportunity to stand upon that beach, between air and ocean, the gateway between worlds on our world, is the greatest treasure of all. Searching, and the arbitrary items we stumble upon along the way, is the gift.
We find some iota of satisfaction in this newly realized notion and leave the beach, confident that the items jangling in the pocket-now-prison will please us later, flashing with the tremendous color and sheen that originally caught our attention at the water’s edge.
It isn’t until later that the next lesson of the beach reveals itself when the trove is spread out on the countertop. Somehow, by some dark and inconceivable magic, the luster and magnitude of the haul have disappeared with the departure of the ocean’s moisture, and before you is what appears to be a handful of slightly diverse gravel. To share this drab collection with anyone would be the equivalent of showing off a handful of scree . Unless that is, we are willing to take a step back and welcome the second lesson:
Our perception of the stones may have changed, but the stones themselves haven’t changed one bit – the lesson is to value how you came upon them, what they meant at that moment, and how the stone before you represents and captures that moment in a timeless capsule.
On January 30, 2025, I was fortunate enough to travel with my parents and sibling across the world to the Philippines, which is a collection of over 6,000 islands and my mother’s birthplace, ie. many beaches. The endless possibilities of what the trip could be tempted expectation, and the preemptive months, weeks, and days leading up to departure shimmered with colors of what was to come. While each day of the trip was inevitably a gift beyond description the reality of the trip was that like all journeys there would be a beginning and an ending. With such an undertaking, the perfect shell is sought out, and returning home with the perfect treasure trove is expected. This fictional and constructed mentality is an ideal method of losing a sense of presence and overlooking the details that make up the bigger picture and experience.
It was while walking on the beach of Boracay, when my gaze was drawn from the horizon down to the shells beneath my feet, that I learned these lessons.
Click each image to enlarge.
