Bradley N.
Yelp
Yelpsop's Fables
The Young Man and the Sea
The ocean watched intently as the young man approached her shifting shore. She always watched the ones who came alone with particular interest, as they often struck her as more lost than others: lost in thought, lost in time, alone in the world, without the lively spring in their step that she so loved in humans. She was not concerned. This was not something that oceans feel. But she was curious. And so she moved a little closer, pushing thick blankets of frothy, white foam ever further upon the sand, so that her salty waters brushed against his feet.
"What is troubling this young man so," mused the ocean. "he seems so much older than he looks. Perhaps if I wait and listen, I will learn of his woes."
And so the ocean waited and listened, her waves scouring the shore while the sun shone and the wind blew and the mountains loomed large in the distance.
The young man walked the entire length of the beach, leaving bootprints in the sand as he walked. He found a large rock sprouting out of the sand, its edges covered with kelp and other wrack from the sea. He carefully chose a few footholds and within moments was at the top. The wind whipped past his shoulders and the sun beat down on his head, which was covered by a black woolen cap securely pulled down over his ears. He folded his arms on his chest, sat down on the rock, and was silent.
But the ocean still listened.
"He isn't that old at all!" thought the ocean. "Even though he seems to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders. Who thinks that he needs to do all of that?"
But the man was not listening to her, even though she spoke with great power as her waves crashed upon the shore and licked the edges of his stony parapet. He was thinking about other things.
Burning vineyards and homes and lost livelihoods in the north.
Mangled bodies and crumbled apartments and downed power lines in the south.
Missiles and menace and unpredictable madmen threatening nuclear war from the west.
Angry crowds and orphaned sons and daughters huddling against the darkness and cold to the east.
Is it any wonder that this young man felt so old? What would be the purpose at this stage in his life to have hope that things would get better? Maybe when he was a boy, he could still believe. Or in his 20s he could lay plans to change the world. Or start a family. Or build a home. Or bring about a quiet revolution. Now, none of it mattered. He was content to be an old man by the sea.
But the ocean would have none of it. She had seen fires before. She had felt the earth move. She had watched as mountains eroded into dust and drained into her watery depths. She had seen sailors drowned and witnessed atomic weapons tested on her reefs. She felt the weight of each new piece of plastic or soiled diaper that washed from the land into her pristine blue waters. She watched as bridges buckled and broke, as landslides covered over the road that skirted her beaches and that brought so many people from around the world to marvel at her surging surf as it crashed against cliffs and pinnacles of stone. She watched as redwoods over a millennium old wearied and died, their massive trunks rolling down canyons to rest on the sands upon which her waves washed and wreaked havoc in wild, winter storms.
"You are not so old as you think," the ocean said to the young man perched on the rock. "You know nothing of this world as it truly exists outside of human-scale time, which you call history. The earth is older than all of that. And of eternity, you can barely begin to understand. Compared to you, I am indeed very old. Except that you are wrong. I am young! I am eternal. I am water. My friends are light, wind, earth, and fire. We shine. We sing. We rise. We burn. We have all the time in the world!"
The young man suddenly looked up from his thoughts. He listened to the sounds the ocean made. He watched the interplay of shadow and light dancing on the sand. He gazed upward at the rocky ridges and mountain slopes that soared above him. He watched as others arrived on the beach, cameras and phones in hand, as they laughed and loved and learned not be afraid of the Pacific's mighty waves. He marveled once more at the raw beauty and power that is Big Sur. And as he gingerly climbed down from his rocky perch and departed the beach to return to the road, the ocean could not help but notice that there was a spring in his step that had not been there earlier. The ocean smiled when she witnessed this. But she was not surprised in the least.
Moral: It's not easy to impress the ocean. She has seen it all, and more. She realized long ago that only eternity is real and that you are only as old as you feel. Ask her the next time you visit. If you are lucky, maybe she will speak to you, too. as she did to the young man.
