Driftwood.
Sometimes life is like an ocean. It’s cold, dark, lonesome, and there just so much of it that you don’t know where you are going, or what is just over the horizon.
Times where the waves seem so large, the wind so strong, and the pounding of the ocean so relentless that you just can’t imagine navigating another current, surviving another sea.
Abandoned.
You feel lost, alone, separated from all that you know, and find yourself eventually washed up somewhere different than you ever expected. A beach in life that you can’t seem to leave, and cannot understand how you ended up here. Others seem to walk by you, unaware of your presence, your pain, your suffering, your existence.
And you feel like driftwood.
As you try to find a moment of rest between the peaks and troughs of the never ending tides, you struggle to move forwards, wondering if time, life, the universe or anyone will be there to notice your journey.
You lose faith in the things which were your lodestar, and find yourself drifting without direction, vision or destination.
Just another beach, different sand, another day.
As hope fades with the passing of each wave, you feel yourself wrapped not in a cloak of invisibility, but anonymity, where you are seen, but no one cares enough to know your name.
The world rushes on without you, and you wonder why you ever thought that anyone cared. It’s almost easier to believe that, and give up on the hope that has sustained you through the darkest nights, the toughest storms, the deepest waves, the hardest times.
It’s so easy to give in, and just be driftwood in the ocean, washed alone on sand.
I am here today to ask you to believe again in yourself.
For you have beauty, and worth, and grace and value. While the current may not be taking you places that you wish to go, there are still choices you can make of your destination.
Although you cannot necessarily choose the sand upon which you are washed, you can choose to understand how you will always be noticed for the gifts you carry within you, and the kindness you radiate around you.
You can believe in you, and that will carry you where you need to be.
(For Pamela, who will always be noticed and always more than she believes.)
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings