displacement and the sea

I was watching TV earlier and this word displacement jumped out at me. I started thinking of the new place in life that I find myself in and also about my visit to the sea this morning; how, for the last few times, I’ve become aware of it in a different way. I’ve caught myself several times remarking that it’s alive. This morning I believe that I was in conversation with it. As with all things new, the sound I heard in my ear was the very basic and familiar one of the wind at sea but I know it was speaking to me and in time I hope to understand. I felt its life force in its waves as they broke at my feet and I asked myself what if this sea was not just outside of me but within me. As one continuum. For a brief moment, the possibility flickered before me. I felt at the edge of a precipice, on the brink of a revelation but then, just as quickly, I remembered my own finiteness and the moment dispersed.

Displacement. Water will take the shape of any container it fills up. It leads me to wonder what is the shape of water within me at this point in my life. I’m guessing since I have no strong sense of structure, it’s much like the sea: open, flowing. What can the sea tell me about this feeling of displacement? Its voice comes and recedes like the waves of this morning, clear, magical. It’s never about the container. It’s always about the life that is water. And water is sacred. Water is holy. It’s not about any physical form, it is not about the stories I create for myself. It is only about the greater presence that’s always there within everything. So are we ever displaced, I ask. We are water, always filling up each container that we occupy but that doesn’t make us the container. If it were to break, we would flow out in our wholeness, displaced out of the container but even greater and more obvious in the truth of who we are; abundant, free flowing, limitless, uncontainable.

And so the sea in its infinite wisdom moves within me and reminds me of my name.

Best
Afshan x