Have you ever been at the beach on a full moon?
One of my favorite things to do is sit on the beach and watch the moonrise over the ocean. It elevates my mood and stirs up a feeling of wonder and otherworldliness—watching that bright white globe shining on a velvet black sky, that sparkling trail of light shining across the water following the waves to the shore. It’s just magical—especially when the waves are calm, and no one else is around to disturb the "vibe."
I had been waiting for months to watch the full moon rise, and I finally got my chance; however, when I arrived at the beach, my expectations quickly turned to disappointment. This was not the magical full-moon beach experience I wanted, but it was just what I needed.
I wanted to blame the beach for my disappointment, except I couldn't blame the beach. This was all on me—my expectations. The beach was reflecting back to me what I already knew about myself—that my serenity is inversely proportional to my expectations. Meaning that the greater my expectations are, the less serenity I have.
So, how did I transform my expectations into serenity? I needed the beach to show me.
Mentioned on the podcast:
* Overcoming a Love/Hate Relationship with the Beach: Pam Uzzell
* Mary Carroll Moore, Last Bets
PODCAST LINKS:
Hello, friends and fellow lovers of all things beachy. Welcome to The Beach Speaks, the podcast that shares stories about the beach and our connection to it. I'm your host and beach lover, Paige Friend, helping you reconnect with the beach, return to your soul, and reimagine your life. So grab a cool drink, relax in your beach chair, stick your toes in the sand, and enjoy this episode of The Beach Hey, beach lover. It's official. It's summer, and you know what that means? Beach time. I just got back from an early morning beach walk, and as usual, when I do these things, I get a boost of creativity and many ideas. I like to call them divine downloads.
However, the way my memory is these days, I get a little panicked because I'm afraid that I won't remember a thing by the time I get home. Fortunately, I have this great app that I can use to record all these fabulous ideas while I'm walking, so I don't have to worry about forgetting when I get home. Unfortunately, what I end up recording invariably turns out to be a very long stream of consciousness, And this question comes to me out of the blue. Have you ever been disappointed by the beach? I know. I know. Me? Disappointed by the beach? Where is this coming from?
Well, let me tell you what happened to me the night of this past full moon, and maybe you'll understand why this question came to me. As you know, the beach has something for everyone, something for whatever mood you're in, shall we say, especially during a Full Moon when our emotions swell up strong like the tide. And that's when I feel a need to be at the beach.
Have you ever been at the beach on a full moon? 1 of my favorite things is to sit on the beach and watch the moon rise over the ocean. It elevates my mood and stirs up this feeling of wonder and otherworldliness. Just watching that bright white globe shining on a velvet black sky, that sparkling trail of light shining across the water as it follows the waves to the shore. It's just magical, especially when the waves are calm. No one is around, and everything is just peaceful. I was excited to see this moon rise because in the past 3 or 4 months, we'd either been out of town, or if we were home, there'd be a storm, or it was just too cloudy to see anything. I couldn't wait to walk down to the beach to find that quiet spot on the sand and bask in that magical moon glow. And all day, I kept checking the time and tides chart, and the official moon rise was still 9:0:7, nothing had changed.
But I wanted to get there early and catch some of the last remaining colors from the sunset. So, around 8:30, I started gathering up my stuff. I didn't want to lug this huge beach bag, so I grabbed a small bag that I could carry over my shoulder, and I stuffed it with my new extra large, super soft beach towel that Ernie bought me for Mother's Day and tucked in my AirPods so I could listen to my full moon playlist. And just before I walked out the door, I ran back to my office to grab my Moonifesting journal and a pen. I just wanted to be sure I had something in case I had some divine download, but I don't know what I was thinking. How was I going to write anything in the dark? Well, of course, I had my phone to take pictures, even though using it to take pictures of the moon is kind of an exercise in futility because it takes terrible pictures at night. But every once in a while, I get lucky and manage to get something decent. Out the door, I headed to the beach access at the end of our street, next to the Margaritaville Hotel.
I tried not to pay attention to these ominous clouds moving across the sky in the distance because energy flows where your attention goes, like the Law of Attraction. I just hoped they would be gone by the time I got there. People were sitting by a fire pit on the patio bar, talking loudly over the sounds of a guy in a microphone singing Cheeseburger in Paradise. I could tell the ocean wouldn't be calm because the sound of the waves was the only thing louder than the bar. The surf was rough, and the clouds I had tried to ignore were now storm clouds moving eerily close to where the moon would rise. And between the clouds, there was this kind of odd orange glow. I guess it was the moon? I've never seen the moon shine through the clouds like that. It was technically the strawberry moon, so maybe pink, but not orange. And to top it off, many more people were around than I expected.
I mean, what did I expect? It was a Friday night, the start of summer, and I'm sure people were eager to get their weekend on. I could feel my mood shift from excited to annoyed because I just didn't have time to search up and down the beach for a secluded place to sit. So, I chose the nearest spot where no one would be sitting, next to one of the empty red lifeguard chairs. And I started feeling a little better, thinking, This might be the place to get a cool shot of the chair and the moon in the background. I tugged the towel out of my tiny beach bag and attempted to spread it out on the uneven stretch of sand. This towel was larger than I was used to, and I kept walking over it with my sandy feet, which irritated me. I have to admit, the towel was nice and soft, and the sand wasn't that bad. But to add to my irritation, I sat down, got settled, held up my phone, and was just about to get this great shot of the lifeguard chair and the orange glow of the sky behind it when somebody with a metal detector walked right in front of me, stopped at the chair, and started fumbling with some part at the end that looked like it kept falling off.
I told him (in my head): "Of all the places you could stop, why did it have to be here? Just as I was trying to take a picture!" I stood up and dragged my towel through the sand to another spot. I immediately regretted my choice because a couple walking hand in hand stopped right in front of me to look at the moon. They eventually moved on, but I don't know. It just seemed like I couldn't get away from anyone. Nothing was going as I expected. There wasn't any sparkling moonglow, just the bright light of the dredging equipment about a quarter mile up the beach, and I could still hear the noise from the bar behind me. I tried putting my headphones on and listening to the songs on my Full Moon playlist, but I don't know. It just wasn't doing it for me. I wanted a quiet, magical, full moon experience, and this was not it.
I was disappointed, and I wanted to blame the beach. Except, I couldn't blame the beach. This was all on me, my expectations. That's when I felt the urge to get up and walk into the ocean. I thought, Okay, if I can stand in the water and feel the full moon, at least there's that. And once I walked into the water and felt the power of the waves splashing cold, salty water up my legs to my waist, I could sense my irritation shifting to serenity. So what if it wasn't the full moonrise experience I'd expected that I'd wanted? It was what I needed. I needed to be there in the rough surf, to look out at the horizon and see this strange orange glow where the Moon was hiding behind a wall of ominous dark clouds.
I needed a reminder to let go of expectations and embrace what is now to ground myself in the waves. It was a beautiful experience as I stood there for a while, and I closed my eyes and hummed the chant So, which is Sanskrit for I am. I just let the sound roll through me, focusing only on the vibration of the waves and the feeling of the sand around my feet. There were still people around, the noise from the beach bar, and all that. But at that moment, it was just me on the beach, standing in the waves. The moon was there. I just couldn't see it. And that was okay.
So after a few minutes standing in the surf, I went back to my towel, brushed the sand off my feet, did a few yoga stretches, and thanked the beach for this moment, for reflecting to me what I already know about myself, that my serenity is inversely proportional to my expectations, meaning that the greater my expectations are, the less serenity I have.
I reached into my beach bag, pulled out my journal, and scribbled three words on the blank page. Expectations, serenity, waves. That's all I needed to write. The rest of the words were in my heart. The morning after the full moon, I went for a beach walk. Still, I almost talked myself out of it, thinking, I don't want the serenity I found last night to be disturbed by that dredging equipment that will most likely be blocking that stretch of beach that I like to walk, but I decided to go anyway. If that part of the beach were blocked off, I would take my serenity and go the other way. And, much to my delight, that entire operation had moved about a mile up the beach at the spot where I usually turn around anyway. Also, to my surprise, the beach was exactly how I expected it to be on the full moon.
The waves were calm, there were no clouds, and even though the sun, not the moon, was shining over the water, The whole vibe was magical. I walked along the edge of the water, staring at the sparkles of white light dancing on the tips of the waves, and I took some beautiful pictures with my phone. The beach was waking up. There were beach and dog walkers, the lifeguards were setting up their chairs, and parents with armfuls of beach gear were yelling at their kids, kicking up sand as they raced toward the water. And amid all this activity, I felt like the beach was all mine. No disappointment, no irritation. My serenity had been restored.
Next time I'm packing up to go to the beach, I will leave my expectations behind because the beach has exactly what I need. On my walk the morning after the full moon, I tuned into an episode of 1 of my favorite podcasts, Art Heals All Wounds. It was a lovely conversation that the host, Pam Mussell, had with a poet and musician, and it was about deep listening and then writing about what you heard. The idea resonated with me because, quite often, the beach speaks to me through the words of others. And then, as I'm walking on the beach, the energy transmutes those words that I hear into thoughts that I feel compelled to; I need to get it all down on paper and then maybe record it for the podcast. And this was all divine timing because later that day, I recorded a conversation with Pam on her podcast, talking about my favorite subject, the beach. I'll let you know when it comes out because I know you want to listen to it. And in the meantime, you can hear Pam tell her story on The Beach Speaks.
I'll include a link to the episode in the show notes. While I'm discussing future podcast episodes, I'm finishing up a conversation I recorded with best-selling author Mary Carole Moore about her recent novel, Last Bets. The story is set in a world where art, scuba diving, and the gambling underworld converge on an island threatened by a dangerous tropical storm. The episode will be out next week, so stay tuned.
Finally, you know I love to hear how the beach speaks to you. I wanted to share this message from Rachel, who lives in the Tampa area and is a long-time fan of the podcast.
Rachel writes: "
"Hey, Paige and fellow beach lovers. When I think about my favorite beach, I always think of Florida beaches as being so incredibly beautiful and, of course, so accessible. I am most fond of the Gulf of Mexico beaches because they're so gentle and accommodating most days.It really would be impossible to pick just one beach that I adore over any other, but perhaps the beach I love the best is the beach that's in my mind and in my memories, where I can go to visit any time of day or night instantly, and where I find solace and comfort in those memories on the beach, hearing the waves, and I can go there whenever I need to"
Thank you, Rachel. The Beach is speaking.
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of The Beach Speaks. If you enjoyed what you heard, please share the beachy vibes with a friend. Because let's be honest, who doesn't want more beach in their lives? If "more beach" is what you crave, go to beachbeaks.com and sign up for my newsletter. It's an easy way to stay in the know, collect some tips and travel hacks for your next beach adventure, and find out what I'm doing at the beach. Beach.
And if you want to dive deeper into the ocean of support, consider becoming a Beach Speaks Patreon member. Your contribution helps keep the podcast afloat, and you'll enjoy some cool perks that only our Patreon family can enjoy. The beach is speaking. Are you listening?
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