Gift from the Sea

Because I’m feeling a little harried this week, I was thinking about our last blog post and about how it’s important to take mini-vacations.

It suddenly occurred to me that I  don’t want a mini-vacation. I would like to take a long vacation!

It’s not going to happen. Instead, I started looking for a little book that I read at the beach in August. By the time I finally found the book hidden under a pile of papers, I was feeling really harried.

But Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s wise, timeless words in Gift from the Sea made me slow down and gave me a sense of quiet and peace.

In 1955, Lindbergh wrote:

The problem is not merely one of Woman and Career, Woman and the Home, Woman and Independence.  It is more basically: how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life….What is the answer? There is no easy answer, no complete answer….I must find a balance somewhere between these two extremes, a swinging of the pendulum between solitude and communion, between retreat and return.

The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy or too impatient….Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches.

For is it not possible that middle age can be looked upon as a period of second flowering, second growth, even a kind of second adolescence?

–Joy