I think that people sometimes think that I'm too serious. It's true that most of them are people that don't understand me very well. But you know what? They are actually right.
I returned to Hapuna Beach today. It was a picture-perfect day in a picture-perfect setting. And since this is in August, the water was deliciously, delightfully warm. The waves were very gently lapping the soft sandy shoreline. As I lay on my back, it was almost like an undulating message in this partly weightless environment.
Every so often, there was a larger wave, whereupon I took the opportunity to do my impression of a breaching whale. It was no less an instinct for me than it might have been for a humpback, since we both first learned it in our early youth. In an instant, i hadn't just returned to Hapuna, I returned to my family summer vacation when I was seven and my father showed me how to jump over the waves. I hadn't a care in the world in that moment, or in this. All else in my life was totally moved aside to make space for pure happiness, joy and love of life.
One of the many things I love about Hapuna is that it's a favorite place for parents to bring their keikis (children). I don't know which is greater - the joy of the keikis or the joy of the mothers and fathers. But the overall feeling is so clear, so simple: all is right with world, this is the way we were meant to live, to experience life. We want, perhaps more than anything else, to show our kids how beautiful and lovely and exciting and joyous life is.
But why just at the beach? Why just with young kids? This is something we want our kids to know and experience about life. But are we tricking them? Or is this really the essence of life? If it is the essence, how could it be so narrowly restricted?
I have no answers. But, just for a little while today, it didn't matter at all if i could our could not figure It out. It was just the sun, the waves, and me - with my occasional breach simulation, just for comic relief. So maybe that is my answer - a playfulness that is not answerable to anything except itself.
This makes me recall a phrase that i encountered in my college days, penned by Vladimir Nabokov in Speak, Memory: "Art for Art's sake".
Yes.
Life for Life's sake.