Ebb and flow

Ebb and flow. Ebb and flow.

You can tell I’ve been by the sea.

Ebb and flow. Ebb and flow.

It’s how I think about life. I find it restful… peaceful… Like watching waves that swell and retreat.

Sometimes life seems good, the world full of promise and light. Ebb. Sometimes life seems disappointing, stuck in a rut, grey. Flow.

The children are playing together, happy, larking and laughing, enjoying each other. Ebb. Now some invisible line has been crossed. They’re annoyed, tempers flare, there are blows. Flow.

Perceptions. You know… One day you study yourself in the mirror and think “hm, not bad”, and the next day you see yourself in the same mirror, wearing the same clothes, and think “oh dear, big tummy, big bottom, not nice”. Ebb and flow.

When I open a newspaper, sometimes I read of the thousands who are struggling, starving, dying. Other times, the ebb is overwhelming, so I turn the page and instead flow with stories of a cat rescued from a well, or pensioners standing up for their rights.

Is it meant to be like this, though? Or is there some sweet spot in the middle? Are we meant to be searching for that place? Is that what life is about? If so, who would tell me how to find it? An up-to-the-minute psychologist? A religious guru? Would it be better to be at the still centre? I like the idea. No more buffeting one way and the other. No more pulling this way and that. No more lurching. But is the world ever experienced like that? Don’t they say that the very universe is expanding and contracting in infinity?

I’ve always liked the French word for wave: une vague. Isn’t that a beautiful accident of language? A wave is a vague thing, a thing you can’t pin down, whose edges you can’t define, a part of a larger whole from which it emerges and into which it disappears. I like the idea of a still centre, but wouldn’t I miss the mysterious perpetual motion that is life? This way, that way, a shift, a movement, changing moods, each one part of an unseen rhythm.

We have a lovely children’s book about a dog, Ebb, and a little girl, Flo. It’s one of my favourites. They go for a picnic to the beach (where else?), and a seagull steals Flo’s sandwich while her back is turned. She blames Ebb, who goes off and sulks in an empty rowing boat. Then a storm brews up, and the rowing boat is swept out to sea. But don’t worry, it ends happily.

Ebb and flow. Ebb and flow. Ebb… and flow…