Mark and I are packing up this morning to drive down to Athlone in advance of the 32 Study Abroad Ireland participants and the rest of the faculty. I’m sad to be leaving Beachview Cottage, our friends, and the Nine Glens of Antrim. We’ve had five nights and four days right on the ocean. I could easily stay another month.
I wanted an ocean view and that is exactly what we got. We arrived to rainbows and we’re leaving under a grey sky. But through it all the ocean has been spectacular. We’ve seen every color from cobalt to sea-glass green, from dark-wash denim to chambray, from aquamarine to taupe-tinged lavender. There have been white capped breakers and waves that gently lapped the shore.
I’ve been wondering what it would be like to live by the ocean. Ciara McKillop told me that she has lived her entire life by the sea and that she can only be away for a week or two and then she begins to long for it. She says she starts to feel claustrophobic if she’s inland too long. I know it’s not reasonable, but I feel that if I lived here by the ocean all my concerns about the arc of my career, my life span, my purpose in life would be easier to bear. The ocean puts all of those things into perspective. Somehow its enormity and beauty provide a counterbalance. I see myself in relation to a wider horizon. I feel more natural and less burdened by what I would, should, or could do.
In fairness, the desert mountain behind our house in Phoenix gives me much the same feeling. Is it any wonder that since moving there I’ve been much more absorbed in contemplating the next phase in my life?
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