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I was chatting to someone who had been through a really tough time. We had spoken about the days of struggle and the sleepless nights. It doesn’t matter what the reason was. There are a thousand reasons why life can become very rough.

In the course of the conversation he mentioned a particular episode. It may seem to you to be very everyday and ordinary. On reflection I think you will find it meaningful and so I share it. He told me there was a day when he had no choice but to leave the office. He simply could not take it and so he left to be anywhere else but there. He went to the parking lot, got his car, and drove to one of the city beaches. 

He told me that as he parked and walked from the car along the beach, he felt himself crushed by depression and hopelessness. 

At some point he became aware of a tugboat hauling a log boom out on the bay. He noticed that it moved so slowly, in fact that it was almost stationary - though it still moved. He then began to hear across the water, and in a sense to feel deeply within himself the sound of that great hidden engine throbbing towards him across the surface of the bay.

He told me that somehow it seemed to enter him and became a kind of word or sign, a response to his pain. It was a warm midday that allowed him a long, pleasant walk. Eventually he turned and walked back toward his parked car, all the time hearing the great deep throb of the unseen engine out in the water. Turning the key in the car and threading slowly through the parked rows of vehicles, he realized he had been given power to move in the face of all that had been immobilizing him and crushing his capacity to live. He realized that beyond his own heart he had come to hear a deeper and greater rhythm that somehow seemed to have taken him over, its insistent beat energizing him. 

I just said to you that you may think the experience everyday and ordinary, but then life can use the most appallingly ordinary voices to speak to us.    

                                 

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  • Digital Heart-shaped EEG iStock1473880672
  • Tugboat hauling logs iStock 1008944154
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