I am the wave in the ocean. As I move along in my life, I see myself growing up; I also see other waves coming and going and wonder where they are bound and why.
As I see the shores of my life's end drawing closer with each passing moment, I feel compelled to search for the answers to who I am, where I come from and where I am going. I search everywhere; I ask the wave in front of me and the one behind me but they are too busy heading for the shores of life's end to answer my questions. They only tell me that I had better prepare myself for the time that I get old and become white on top. These answers provide me no comfort, and the time I have expended asking them have brought me that much closer to the shores of life's end.
Seeing this, I am struck with a sense of fear and desperation. In that momentous terror, I turn and look within myself and find a peace, an essential character of the very waters that surround and define what I am made of; discovering what I've known as myself is that aspect of the waters that stands above the rest of the ocean, just like everyone else in this turbulent world.
Once I thought I was the wave in the ocean, but now I know, I AM, the ocean in the wave and the ocean never dies.
© Copyright February 10, 2004 by Michael Rice
6:54 PM
May 1, 1983 First Written
May 23, 1983 Basic Rewrite and Edit
This short story was written after I had made my second trip from Alaska. At the time of its creation my father was very ill with lung cancer and I had been traveling all over New England searching for a place to write up my material. After spending some very difficult times without food and bathing in very cold streams in the Maine woods, I started to hitch-hike south to a place where I could rest. Along the way a fellow who happened to be a ranger for a park near the ocean gave me a ride. I asked him if he knew of any interesting and beautiful areas I could camp in, he suggested Reid Beach State Park. So he drove me right out to the park.
Being very weak from lack of food I sought out a place on a rocky outcropping in the sun by the ocean to try and keep my body warm. It was May first 1981 and this was the day that I had made a commitment to start a book. I believe that what I wrote in my journal that morning was the best thing I placed on paper because the Lord had given it to me. Now that I reflect back on it over the years that have gone by, I realize that this story sums up everything that I would ever want to convey in a book. This story contains a reflection of the beginning and end of all things in my life, as well as the nature of the coexistence of divine and human consciousness. It conveys all of what I wanted my story of the journey to speak about in a way that may help others understand what is most important about the journey of life we all must take.
I have left the story as I first received it except for one exception; I removed one word from the last line that blocked the revelation that is reflected there in. The Lord said, "The way is narrow, many will be called but few will be chosen."
Update: November 18, 2012 4:21 Alaska Time
Just received an email from "Hello Poetry" site. It's not uncommon for me to see something, think it's interesting, sign up then forget what I've done. Not exactly sure if I'm doing then right thing or not. I'm "not" a poet" by any stretch of the imagination, clearly remembering how much I hated the study of Prose and Poetry while in school; I also had a great dislike for writing due to a problem with character transposition and recognition, never made headway until some helpful equipment was acquired by my blind wife whom I married some ten years after this very cold, lonely isolated chapter of life.
Anyway, the key point never mentioned in the notes, is the fact that I'm a Theoretical Physicist who tends to understand everything in terms of "Space-Time" physics, as in, all things in the universe are made of waves, from atoms to the way sun light gets to the earth. Religion and faith were tough for me to deal with, until I discovered that all major physicists were Christians and gave us our current understanding of the universe. Galileo discovered that the sun was the center of the solar system and was told by the church leaders to "recant" or suffer the consequences. He couldn't recant of the truth that God had written in the heavens, so he was locked up under guard in a private church house to limit the propagation of his heresy, as the church saw it.
Nevertheless, about five years before this bit of prose, my life was going the wrong way and I asked to be saved from being tortured by some unkind people in California; it was in 1976 that God saved me through faith in Jesus Christ. By this time, I've returned from a world of heavenly purity, joy and love as I've spent more than ten years of my life teaching children in Korea. All children in Korea are loved in a world without drugs, guns, wars, violence or divorce.
Americans can't believe me, just as I found in hard to believe until I launched a six year long intensive scientific investigation in order to discover the truth. What I discovered is true indeed as it is related to something the Koreans have and the West will never achieve, a ten thousand year unbroken written history documenting their systematic method for social harmony and success while living on this planet. Both the Western race and the Eastern race have been on the planet the same amount of time; the major difference is the Eastern race survives through natural harmony, agrarian sustenance along with the essential process of placing the good of the "collective" over one's personal "wants." I need not define what the West already believes.
"I Am the Ocean in the wave" The Ocean is one huge collective. Conform to what is written in Nature as well as the Bible and earthly life will over flow with health and joy. I seriously doubt that such a change will happen any time soon; because of this, the portrait is flawed and no mixing or remixing of paints will repair the error. The only way is to learn from the mistake by cherishing all that was beautiful and pure, because it's critical that I admit the error, and simple hold the memories of the good and burn the canvas without shedding tears, or grieving on my knees. Those children I had to meet and gather will stand with me and warm themselves on the dying glow of embers left from a fiery painting that just went wrong.
If the reader is not clear about what is written, they only need ask, "Am I in the picture or standing with the children."