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The waves crash in sounding like a busy bowling alley. Once fully curled and unleashed, you hear the hiss as the sea water spreads across the shoreline on the beach.
As I listen to this, my mind fixates on the word mystery. The ocean is one of the greatest of life’s mysteries. We see the exterior, the water on top, but always wonder what’s beneath it, what lurks, what lives, what dies.
Like the ocean, the sun hidden by a few half-hearted clouds belongs on the Top 10 list of life’s most serious mysteries. Out there somewhere sizzles the sun. Scientists say it’s much bigger than the Earth.
This comparison seems inaccurate. As I sit on my beach towel fifteen feet from the hissing water, I think about the sun appearing to be one-millionth the size of Earth. That’s how it looks on this vaguely overcast Sunday morning, July 3rd.
It looks smaller but is so much bigger than Earth. Seems paradoxical or non-sensical. Maybe it’s an old wive’s tale. Definitely mysterious.
The spot where I’m sitting is exactly where I’ve sat since I was a baby 59 years ago on Deauville Beach in Rehoboth, Delaware. As I kid I hung out here for hundreds of hours learning to dive through waves, riding a navy blue raft, getting out, and applying Coppertone.
I would be there day after day, summer after summer, with my cousins who also have spent their entire lives on this same beach during summers and big holiday weekends like this one.
This is our home beach. To all of us Rehoboth is, at least, a whiff of Heaven and in some conceptual way Heaven itself.
On this same beach during college, I soaked in sun with my cousins and friends every day. We’d arrive around 12 noon, deepen our sunburns, laugh, cool off in the water, then go work at the local bars at night. We’d stay up late drinking beer and spiked iced teas. Girls liked guys; guys liked girls. You do the math.
Those times seem so long ago yet, of course, like last week. Time blazes by.
Time, like the ocean and sun and sand and college frolicking, is also a mammoth mystery. One day you’re 19 years old hanging out with your cousins and friends fully aware you’re having the most carefree, purely enjoyable summer of your life – non-stop.
The next day you’re sitting in your beach house at 7:37 am on a Sunday morning typing away as an elderly man, well past middle age, with three kids grown up and out of the house reflecting on the word mystery and the realization that life is one big mystery.
Why am I here? Why was I born? What is my purpose? Have I fulfilled it?
Answers to these questions are unknowable. I can think I know the answers but I can’t be certain. The fact that we can’t be certain about why we’re here is yet another mysterious truth.
Can truths be both certain and mysterious at the same time? I think so.
This day is still an infant. I got up so early not even all the hundreds of beach runners, walkers, and cyclists had started their sweat rituals.
It was just me, on the beach. I took my flip-flops off before sitting on the towel a few feet behind me. A lady walked the beach picking up all the stray objects on the beach from yesterday’s beach activities such as a kid’s fire engine red sand shovel.
Without me noticing she picked up my flops, which didn’t match. One was brown, the other blue. When I stood up to leave, they were gone and so was she.
Why did she take my flip-flops?
Another mystery.
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
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