Have you ever noticed the salt? The way it sticks to the inside of your nose, tickles your throat as it finds its way to your lungs, gently burrows in with each inhale, bringing the sea with it. Or the tides? How they roll so gently, a sheet of white pillowy foam, then pull back and roar, crashing with white teeth, before subsiding again, tucked in to sleep for a moment more. The way they lull you into their rhythm, the to-and-fro, the give and take, the living pulse of the planet, pulling and pushing, until your own body begins to move in sync, breathing to the beat of this watery drum, tugged with the power of the ocean. Have you ever noticed how the sea calls you home? Drawing your feet beneath the sand, stealing your air to the coastal winds, finding its way to your very core.
Time passes. You breathe. The tide pulls. The sea calls you home.
I’ve just returned from two days disconnected, out in “the wilderness” as my friends would say, hiking, camping, and just generally exploring a new part of the California coastline that I’d never experienced before. And while I could wax lyrically about the majesty of the coastal redwoods, the serene tranquility of a rocky beach at dawn, the crystal blueness of the Pacific waters, or the orchestral melodies of flocks of birds from day into night, the idea that keeps ringing in me clearly, next to thoughts of relaxation and underrated local parks, is newness.
To be honest, I’m not even sure “newness” is a word, although the auto-spell check of my word processor has yet to horrify me with any squiggly red underline or exclamation point of grammatical terror at it, but it feels like the right encapsulation of the feeling I believe we are all in desperate need of, whether we know it or not. Newness, as I see it, is a full-body feeling of something new, something not yet tried or experienced before, something inspiring in contrast to a life of current routine and familiar comfort. Say it enough times, and it might sound like a nonsensical babble, but cling to this idea with me for a moment.
We’ve been living in a pandemic for over a year at this point. No matter where you are in the world, I would hazard a bet that you’ve read or heard about or even thought about COVID at least once every day for the last year. That’s a long time. That’s a lot of stress and pressure and sorrow and a whole bucket of complex emotions and feelings and experiences. The pandemic has changed the way we do life, changed our routines, changed our interactions, changed our relationships, changed almost everything. And while across the world, we’ve experienced many vastly different national responses to the pandemic, and I can only speak to the US response, we’ve all experienced it in one form or another. Am I starting to sound like every opinion article you’ve read in the last few months? Bare with me a moment more.
For many of us, this meant choosing safety and security above all else. Protect yourself, your family, your local community. Stay home, stay safe. Shop local, don’t travel, stay at least six feet apart in an airy backyard if you even dare visit someone outside of your bubble. In the face of stress and uncertainty, we dove into new routines, replacing commutes with morning walks and at-home workouts, replacing talkative lunch hours with lunchtime TV or midday reading, replacing happy hours and evenings out with zoom (insert collective groan). We clung to these new routines as a sense of stability in the face of overwhelming forces: a mysterious invisible disease, high-flying emotional stress, and even a collective eye-opening to pervasive social and cultural inequality.
Think back to the beginning with me. Yes, there was extremely high anxiety about pretty much everything. It doesn’t take much for many of us to think back to how dark those early days were. Quiet freeways. Empty supermarket shelves. Bad news on bad news on bad news. But, do you remember what tiny sparks of joy you forced yourself to find during those initial months? The creative renaissance of new recipes you attempted in your kitchen, the odd and obscure new hobbies you invested in, the new corners of your neighborhood you explored on your daily walks.
Did you notice something? All of those things were new. New recipes. New hobbies. New neighborhood corners. Yes, they were tentative footsteps in a pool none of us were willing to jump into, because who knew when and where COVID might get you, but they were the moments that brought us some trickle of happiness or enjoyment in a flood of shitty news. And in the face of such a terrible state of things, to bring us all the way back up to even joyful levels, even if just for a moment or two, says a lot.
Now, a year on, a lot of those initial coping mechanisms and small jolts of joy have faded in their impact, just as a lot of the overwhelming stress has subdued to somewhat more manageable levels – a treacherous roller coaster that feels like it’s smoothing out to a bumpy car ride. So how do you find new joy when we are–yes, still–in a pandemic?
The idea of newness, this full-body enveloping feeling of something novel and different, came to me as I sat on Van Damme Beach, a few miles south of coastal Mendocino, knowing by my watch that the sun was rising, even if I couldn’t see it behind the thick marine fog layer that surrounded the isolated cove. I was alone with my thoughts and my self, only interrupted by the occasional squawk of a seagull fluffing its feathers in the ripple of the tide. The sand was rough and frigid beneath my feet, the driftwood I sat on smooth from years of use, the air clogged with the salty freshness of the sea mingled with the fog.
I have sat on a beach like this almost every day during this pandemic. Each morning, as part of my own familiar and comforting routine, I walk along the beach around the corner from my apartment, enjoying the peaceful tranquility of quiet waves before the world wakes up. My beach, as I like to think of it during the empty early dawn hours, is also often clouded with marine fog at dawn, covered with cold coarse sand, and plagued by seagulls at all hours of the day. So why on earth did my moment on Van Damme beach feel so strikingly different, so invigorating, so life-giving, compared to my own beach only a few hours south of it?
This is newness. This full-body sensation of something different. Something fresh. Something new. Sure, I was still smelling the salty air of the Pacific ocean, but this was new salty air. Sure, I was still feeling sand between my toes, but this was new sand. Sure, I was still listening to seagulls squawk and fight over morsels of who-knows-what, and they may have even been the same seagulls from my own beach, but their sound carried differently in this new beach with new morsels to fight over and new things to squawk about.
The joy we experience when we pick up a new craft, try a new take-out restaurant, or attempt a new workout, can sometimes be tinted with hesitation or a resistance to change. Sometimes, we don’t even like them and we get frustrated and turn away quickly, returning swiftly to what we know. We like our routines, our familiar comforts. They are safe and secure. We know they won’t hurt us. We know we don’t hate them. But it’s time for us to turn from soothing to exciting, from comfortable to new. The joyful reward we can experience when taking new risks and trying new things far outweighs the dull monotony of routine. It not only nudges us out of our safety zone, it invigorates us.
When we embrace a thirst for something new and can indulge in a full-body new sensation, titillating every single sense we have, that newness can bring us true unencumbered and exuberant joy. When we stop shying away from the things that scare us or even take the things we’re familiar with and put them in a new light, we can find absolute awe and wonder. Newness is a state of inspiration, a true breath of fresh new air, an eye-opening freedom to experience joy.
I didn’t go sky-diving or hop on a plane to a foreign land. I went as far as a half-tank of gas in my car would allow me to go. Beaches and dawn mornings are familiar to me and I experienced them in a new place. I let every sense tingle me inside and out. I leaned into the full immersion of something familiar but something also so wonderfully new. And the joy I experienced from that hour on Van Damme beach was an hour I would not give up for the world.
Be restless, stay restless, and embrace the newness, my friends.
