After a jam packed last couple of months and the imminent promise of more madness in the months to follow, I decided it was necessary for me to take a “self care” moment. Reflection, after all, is as important as action… So I got on a plane by myself and flew to a little island on the Caribbean where I could be still, alone with my thoughts, and process all that had just transpired!

Each day consisted of me waking up in the afternoon, moving at a pace incredibly too slow to get anything done, then laying on the beach for hours without cell phone or internet service, before finally returning home to eat and rest (lol)!

One day as I was sitting on the beach, I remembered something I had seen in Barbados last summer. A woman had covered herself in a light layer of sand as a kind of natural exfoliant. I decided to try it because, well who doesn’t love gorgeous, radiant, sun kissed skin right? So as I sat near the shore I gently covered my legs with a small castle made of sand, but each time a new wave came crashing onto the shore it washed away what I had built. I repeated these actions of creation and destruction several times until the metaphor became all too obvious: Nothing is permanent.

Even though the waves kept washing away my little creations, I had nothing to do and no place to be… so I decided to keep building anyway… And so I kept building… And I kept building… And I kept building until I had built a foundation so solid that one single crashing wave couldn’t destroy all that I had manifested. And then I kept building and building and building … And the now seemingly inconsequential waves couldn’t destroy fast enough for me to rebuild more, stronger, better… And I was reminded that no matter what’s going on in our lives, no matter how many waves are crashing or insurmountable obstacles are placed in our path… JUST. KEEP. BUILDING.

I can’t stop the tide, nor should I. I can’t control what’s happening in the world around me, but what I can do is create… Constantly… Non-Stop.

After quite some time on the beach, I took a moment of stillness to admire what I had created. My fortress in the sand was beautiful, and I was proud that I had willed it into being from nothing. It was sturdy, strong, and most importantly it was a reflection of who I was in that moment in time. As the sun continued to set and it neared time for me to leave that spot, I realized that I had dug myself in so deep, built a foundation so strong, that I was now stuck… Two feet under the sand… Unable to move, change, or grow.  In that moment I understood that I had two options … Stay there… Stuck… In this spot, with this thing I had devoted so much of my of my day towards building… Or, destroy it in order to move forward.

In that moment of thought, I was reminded that no matter how hard we have worked on something… We must give ourselves space to evolve, and understand that this evolution may require leaving things behind that we’ve outgrown. There are people, or places, or things we may care deeply about, and once served a valuable purpose in our lives, but in this moment only serve to hold us back.

 

So I destroyed this beautiful thing I had built and jumped into the ocean, washing away the last remnants of the sand castle off my skin and immersed myself in the endless salt water of the Caribbean… Fresh… New.

 

The remains of my labor still laid there… As a reminder of what I had done… But as the day continued to turn to night and the tide grew, the waves kept crashing against the sand. Each time less and less and less of the “shell” of my work reminded, and what  survived became something different.

 

 

Finally I went back the next morning, only to discover that the sand was flat… Seemingly untouched… As if I had never been there … As if I hadn’t spent so much of the day prior creating this beautiful fortress that once stood strong against the ocean. And in that moment of discovery I re-learned the original lesson the water had taught me, only this time much deeper. I re-learned that nothing is permanent, but also that this is OK… Maybe even necessary. No matter how much work you put into something today… It may be gone tomorrow. The only way to stay relevant is to continue to grow and change at every single moment….Because yesterday is gone and “the present” is a gift, a new opportunity to create again… Yesterday’s accomplishments mean nothing today. We MUST Keep Building.