Have you ever walked the beach and daydreamt about finding an old bottle just lying on the shore, corked and sealed. You peer inside and see what looks like what could be paper. Your heart quickens as your mind races to what it could be. A buried treasure map, a love letter, someone’s last words. With excitement and anticipation, you carefully open the bottle and ever so gently slide the paper out from its encased safety. I wish daily life was this way. That we have a life protected from all the bad things that could harm it and are received into a world with great anticipation. With this bottle, traversing the ocean, tossed to and frow by the waves, pelted by the wind and the sun maybe for years on end, but never breaking, to finally meet its destination on that very beach you are walking on. That is life isn’t it. That is what we all have to go through in a sense. We have a spirit inside us, a story to tell and we are just existing for the right time and place to be opened.
Many times, bottles like this are never found. They are broken from the storms, hit by vessels, or the seal leaks and they sink to the cold dark depths of a world we don’t belong in. People are like this. Drifting along, just existing, day after day year after year. And on a rare occasion they are found upon a beach by a being that is open to discovery and hence setting your story free from its own bottle. We need people like this in the world. We need the storytellers, and we need people seeking the stored treasure of those stories. We need to be the message and we need to be the finder and bottle openers so the stories can be shared and lived. Every message in a bottle is vitally important, for it is our message that wants to desperately be found be heard and be shared. We are all bottles with our own message of us sealed inside traversing this thing called life.
As I’m getting older, I’m trying to see the value in each and every moment and I find myself more often than not consumed with just trying not to break or sink. Life is truly a rolling sea of experiences. I daydream about lying on the beach so to speak, being able to be opened and my message shared with the world. I suppose that’s why I started writing. I suppose to some extent that’s why we tell stories and pass them down from generation to generation, so we can share in our existence. There is much out in the world that is harsh and sad and even too big for us to understand. But there is also just a simple, quiet time. A time to reflect and just be what we were created to be. My message in the bottle to you is as you seek the bottle on the beach, seek also yourself for you too are also a bottle. Share your message with the world, be it a love poem, a treasure or even just a long-distance hello. A message in the bottle is a sacred find and that’s what you are, a sacred find. You are here for a reason, and I encourage you to find your message and don’t waste a day sharing that adventure. See ya on the journey.
To See Or Not To See 