Sea glass and choosing softness
Ever since moving into this old house by the sea, I’ve been walking the shores of Wellington’s South Coast collecting sea glass. Like the character Honora in the book Sea Glass by Anita Shreve, I bought a white dish to store them in and celebrate the colours. Most sea glass, like glass that you come across in daily life, is white, green or brown. Still worth gathering for sure, but sometimes you come across special gems peeking from behind the pebbles – creamy yellows or pale turquoise – and you wonder what they could have been and where they started their journey that landed them on this beach.
In everyday life, glass is usually nothing we remark on – we use it as a vessel to drink our water from, we look through it to check the weather or watch the birds or watch the world when we’re on the bus. When it’s broken, it shifts from an ordinary thing to a dangerous thing in an instant. But there is nothing dangerous about the soft, round pastel buttons of sea-weathered glass.
Glass is made when sand, soda ash and limestone are heated at extreme temperatures and harden to become a new substance. The primary ingredient, sand, is, in its raw state, utterly free-flowing and loose. Like sand, the raw ingredients of people become hardened under pressure, turning brittle and fragile and potentially dangerous.
But what happens with sea glass is what can happen with people as the waves of life push us against the rocks of our experiences – our sharp edges can soften as we experience challenges and learn about ourselves and life, about others and their foibles, about what matters. Or sometimes the flow of the waves can be gentle, carrying us along in moments or periods when things are lighter and more joyful. We float alongside birdsong or melt with love when we come face-to-face with a dog.
It’s too easy to become hardened to others, hardened to ourselves, hardened to the world and to stay sharp – we all have our edges, we are all humans conditioned by millions of years of evolution for survival. None of us is perfect; we are all an unfinished product and always will be. I don’t have this nailed myself but I want to try and choose the path of softness. I hope together we can aspire to be sea glass, softened by the journey we take. 💙
If you are inspired, this talk by Tara Brach on compassion is like a balm to the soul.