It made me think: 'someone had been here before'. I know you are thinking to yourself 'well duh!!! it is a public beach'. That's not the point, the point is someone WAS in this very spot. I closed my eyes and I began to wonder who it could have been. I pictured a young lady in her early twenties she was fair skin and slightly tanned. She had long flowing blond hair and wore a white linen shirt with matching white linen pants. There was a young man seated beside her of similar complexion and dark hair. I must admit it was more of a challenge to visualize the guy ( please save your wise comments). He wore board shorts, blue and white, with an indistinguishable pattern that alternated between the two colors, and a green shirt (he was not very good at matching).
They sat together becoming engrossed in their conversation. She was fidgety, she did not like to sit still doing nothing. So she began to braid a wreath of vines that she unconsciously plucked from the sand as they continued to talk.
I couldn't help but to realize that this was the first time I gave any thought to the fact that I was in a place that was visited by someone prior to my being there. So often I overlook the existence of others and the trail they have left behind as evidence of that existence.
More often than never we approach life with the same dismissive attitude. We do not ackowledge that others have been here. We lead solitary lifestyles that don't take into account the existence of those around us and how it may impact our own. A concept likened to that of the science behind the Sensory receptors in our skin that are designed to recieve input and send electrical messages through a series of winding nerve causeways and synapses to relay a message to our brain that takes in that message and responds in like manner to let us know appropriate responses to each sensory input we recieve from our environment. However, somewhere in our own social nerve network we have become numbed. We no longer perceive that external stimuli.
I often feel lonely, as if the traces of my being constantly go unnoticed by those that tread over the shadows of the essence of my reality. But how many people have I allowed to experience comparable feelings of rejection by a similar flip of the same coin taken from my own purse?
As I walked away, brushing the residue of the disfigured rock I used as a chair off of my buttocks, I had in my hand the 'useless' vine wreath. Someone left something behind, and it did not go unnoticed. I also realized something, as I walked away, I left nothing behind but took the memories and the evidence of another with me.
Sometimes we worry that we go unnoticed, but what do we leave behind to be remembered by? What legacy have we emblazoned on the walls of our once was? Have we painted murals we want to be remembered by? Have we painted murals at all?
But that is the topic of another note... for now I will just enjoy the company of one anonymous, 'useless', vine wreath.
