Riding the Waves

“Riding waves” is often an analogy for the experience of emotional highs and lows. This phrase is one of the two inspirations for this blog title. The second is an actual wave rider-slash-photographer featured in a Sierra Club magazine that I was reminded of yesterday when my friend Stephanie showed me a photograph she shot that was as amazing to me as his work.

I’d read this View from the Vortex article when the issue came out a few months ago and recall thinking something to the effect of: “yeah, this kind of free spiritedness must be commonplace in Hawaii” and that was the extent of my attention to the subject. When I saw Stephanie’s photo of a woman bounding up through the surface of the ocean with her hair arcing behind her and the droplets of the wave all so sparklingly defined, I felt a twinge of insight that I knew I should explore further.

The exploration happened the next day when I’d re-read a journal entry that was a real doozy—you know what I mean—the sort that is full of venom and blame; why me God, I’m trying so hard, blah blah blah... I had allowed myself to really let loose with this one, swears and all, so I could attempt to exorcise the frustration I was feeling about parenting two adolescents and trying to keep my head above water despite the four different waves the two of them and my husband and I were all riding at the time.

After reading this type of journal entry once the emotional charge has subsided, I am almost always a bit sardonic; as if I had been overly dramatic and really, Karen, get a grip. But having journaled for so long I know that processing isn’t always nice and tidy—it’s often ugly and hard to look at—so I pretended someone else had written it! When I play subtle mind games like this, it’s actually easier to have compassion for myself.

Sitting and breathing with compassion (like the venerable Thich Naht Hahn teaches), even though it was literally less than a minute, my inner eye showed me Stephanie’s photo as if to say, “you’re a good parent so just focus on the peaks of the waves, not the valleys underwater.” And as much as I turn my nose up at the positive mental attitude balderdash, particularly when I’m riding the big kahuna and afraid I might drown, it really is as simple as making this subtle shift in perspective. 

This same ‘joie de vivre’ captured by the more famous guy in Hawaii isn’t reserved for those lucky enough to live near the ocean, it’s right under our noses, in our circle of friends, available and within all of us all of the time. However, it is nice to be reminded of it now and then. And the analogy between the photograph of the wave and the emotional riding of the wave is made in the capturing of either wave. The camera captures the tangible wave and the journal captures the emotional one—given the right perspective! 

To summarize the Inner Fortune journaling techniques used in this process:

  1. I wrote about negative emotions, in a no-holds-barred fashion, while I was having them
  2. I noticed a spark of insight that didn’t make immediate sense and logged it in the social section of my Inner Fortune journal
  3. I re-read a journal entry that hadn’t been fully processed (one that after having been written, doesn’t immediately lift the spirit) 
  4. And I sat with compassion for myself, using mind games as necessary, and waited for clear perspective to descend on me (this often takes many attempts and we have to take all the little bits of perspective as they come) 
  5. Then, the next morning after interpreting my dreams, I received the following message: “it is from within the lowest valleys that we gain the greatest appreciation of the highest (most beautiful, powerful…) peaks.”