Carol Mackay Mertz

When I was a child, our family would go to the beach on Saturdays. I remember going to get the 25 pound block of ice for the ice chest with my Father on Friday nights. The ice would keep our lunch and dinner cold all day long on Saturday. This was the 1950’s and we visited the Rehobeth and Ocean City beaches along the east coast, USA. There were beach blankets, chairs, sandwiches with sand in them, and a particular cookie called Pecan Sandies (was my mother even then being delicately sarcastic.) There were rafts to surf on, the umbrella and long cool waves that invited one in for a ride. There was wave counting to get in rhythm with the cadence of the waves and taking advantage of the “seventh wave” the largest and longest.

My father was English/Scots and liked to do most everything in a basic and unique way. So while we blew up the rubber inflatable rafts for me and my sister and mother, he also taught me and my siblings how to body surf. I never like it much, as I was forever grinding my face into the rough sand at the end of the wave. The raft was a much less violent way to end a ride on a wave. That simple preference was to save my life some four decades later.

So I am writing this on the last day of April, or the first day of May, according to the time keeping clock on WordPress. I was pretty pissed off when I began writing, but I have mellowed quite a bit remembering my father’s instruction, the wave watching, and the basic resonance of being at the edge of a vast and glorious ocean. Mmmmm! Why was I pissed, OK, it was that I had been reading a few articles which were illustrating the chaos of our time. They were biased, cloaked in blame and shame, pointing fingers, and righteousness.

The question arose in me, “Who do you trust?” There are so many stories, so many “truths”, so many theories out there, the question of who do you trust has become a question of survival in this day and age.

So it’s really scary out there now. People are suing people, governments, all kinds of beings. I’ve spoken of chaos before here in my blogs, and it’s really happening and it’s really upsetting. There are sides to the covid question, the vaccines, and the ultimate and safe diet to eat at this precise moment!

When I began this rant which has nicely turned into a moment of reflection, I saw myself at the beach as a child, on a raft, surfing the waves, and knowing with a hundred percent certainty that I was doomed to a drubbing. In the seconds before that moment of undeniable truth, I could feel that I was suddenly in the wrong part of the wave, that it was bigger than I thought, that I knew I would lose the raft, that I knew I’d be ground into the sand and have my bathing suit filled with grit. The only questionable outcome was whether I had enough air in my lungs to be caught under the wave until it was done with me.

Why did I keep going back into the waves? Was I even then gathering life experience? Sure I was! Was I perfecting the art of surviving the unexpected power of the wave? Well I was learning at least…perfection might have been down the road a bit. Was I hoping to gain a more refined sense of surfing? Was I having fun?

So at the moment I saw my young self in the wave that at some micro second was going to turn into a bashing of monumental proportions, I knew this was the answer to my question of “Who do you trust?”

There was no one else to consult and no time in that moment to seek guidance. There were no books to read, blogs to ponder, YouTube’s to watch, wave experts to quantify my chances of getting creamed, not even my experienced father to consult.

So I did the time honored practice of entering my own personal learning curve of life experience and went with the flow….got pummeled…and lived to do it all again. Who do I trust? Right now in this chaotic heave of humans finding their sovereignty, I am only going to trust myself, for I give away my power and my sovereignty when I let others influence my own learning curve.

When I was in my fifties and my niece in her thirties, we were at Cape Hatteras, known for its treacherous rip tides and fluky currents. It was a clear day, my niece, a doctor, and I were on boogie boards with the straps of the boards attached to our wrists, thank goodness. Our husbands were less than 20 feet away from us on shore playing with my niece’s toddler.

My niece and I were having fun riding the waves when at the same moment, we became aware that we were being pulled out to sea. The chop was incessant and disorienting. If I faced the waves, there was no breathing space. My niece was trying unsuccessfully to swim to shore and tow me behind. Our shouts for help to our husbands went unheard.

At this ultimate moment of distress, I heard this voice in my head, telling me to “ face away from the waves.” When I did that I gained my breath again as the waves washed over my head but gave me that moment to breath in air, and I calmed down. Then I remembered those charts of rip currents and knew they fanned out from the central pull. So then I knew we had to kick either north or south and let the current take us out of the strong vortex of the middle, and so we swam parallel with the shore hanging onto each other’s boards until the current weakened and we could then head straight for the beach at a different point farther up the shoreline.

So I trusted the voice in my head, my higher self, my soul. It just wasn’t my time to off the planet. The guidance was accurate and life saving. It came from within me. It is a big lesson I can heed again now, when waves are crashing everywhere.

So monumental waves come and go. Waves of consciousness are currently influencing humanity. Like the little girl I once was, and the woman I became, I know I am in the wave. I know the wave can be smooth or may go wonky on me and make life either uncomfortable or down right life threatening. And as I write this, I know without a doubt that I can survive these waves.

Because…like…here I am!

So trust yourself! Waves happen! Be at peace. Sending love to you all.