Every year at Easter, we go to a lake that is a couple of hours away from home and camp for the weekend with friends. We take boats and jetskis and enjoy a long weekend out in the clear, clean air and on the water.
The lake is freshwater, so it is clean and refreshing and … well, just delightful.
It’s a really large lake – in fact it holds greater than 900ML (that’s 900 million litres of water)!
Sometimes, just for fun, we might go for a ride on the jetski from one end of the lake to the other. Believe it or not, that is much more than 8km (5mi). You head out with a sense of adventure, with the wind blowing through your hair, as you go off exploring the lake. The scenery keeps changing. Farm land, to waterfront housing, to a tourist camping area, and then this mystical, almost surreal section where all of these dead trees are silently poking up through the still water.
The real fun begins though when you turn around to head back. Because of the size of the lake, sitting on a jetski gives you a perception that the water just goes on and on. The mountains all around you seem to overlap each other and you have this sense that you are no longer even sure where “home” is.
At that distance – several kilometres from camp – it is not possible to see the tents or people on the shore. It’s not even possible to figure out exactly where the campsite is.
That very fact – sitting on a (relatively) small watercraft in the middle of a very large lake – can be quite daunting. Maybe even confronting.
It’s not difficult to almost get a sense of panic, because while you know what direction you generally need to head in to get back to camp, you actually have no perspective of where you are actually heading for.
As you continue to travel across the water back to where you think camp is, the landscape continues to change.
But things start to get clearer. Landmarks start to become familiar. You recognise a tree here, or a house on the hill there. You might smell that familiar smoke from a fire that is burning nearby, or recognise the sound of a pump or motor that is running.
As you keep travelling, everything starts to come into perspective.
Life can be a bit like that. You can feel lost, overwhelmed, and confused. If you sit still and don’t do anything, then nothing changes and and you will never find your way. You can sometimes continue to have this sense that you are adrift in the middle of a large ocean.
But if you keep moving – albeit slowly but in the “right” direction – gradually everything comes into focus. Things become familiar and you start to become comfortable again.
You might get clarity.
Eventually you will see things differently, clearly, and you find what you are looking for … but you will only find it if you keep moving towards it. If you stay sitting at the beginning of the journey, you will be confused, lost.
But if you make the effort to move towards your goal, you will change your position. You will change your perspective. You will change your focus.
Don’t stay still. Keep moving. Keep looking. Keep searching.
#goinglimbic
#keepitfrontal