lessons in humility

It's healthy to be reminded of your place in the world, the fact that there are things above and below you in all matters. About two years ago, a fellow showed me one of his "favorite spots", which was simply the farthest point out on the wharf. Being dark out, there was nothing to disturb the surface or the sound of the water. If I stared directly out at the ocean, all dark dark blue and grays of the reflected moon, it felt like I wasn't standing on anything, that the water had swallowed me whole. On all sides I could see the heartbeat of the ocean, sliding steadily and sure and indestructible and silent. And it went in every direction, the same pulse all along the length of the beach as far as I could see. After barely being able to make sense of and stow away this image in its entirety, I remembered that what I was looking at was only the bay, the Monterey Bay, that the entire ocean spread out for thousands of miles past where I could see and unlike the land around me, punctuated and abridged and divided by trees and mountains and rivers, the ocean was one. The pulses I witnessed had traveled the length of its body, and I was simply witnessing the subtle twitch in the wrist of that body. I could feel myself shrinking in relation to the growth of my comprehension of that body of water. Along with it went my worries and my pride.