Casting Off from the Dock...

If you have ever kayaked, paddle boarded or took a small vessel out on the water, you know the feeling of unburdening yourself from the tether to shore.  There is such a moment of anxiety when you release the stability of shore and cast off into the open water.  There is excitement, danger, hope, fear all swirled together...but as soon as you are adrift before you begin to paddle, you are open.  Gliding over the water, no surety, no strokes in a particular direction, just skimming, effortless movement towards what you are not sure.

It is a potent feeling.  There is infinite possibility in the cast off.  A wonderful journey, a wet journey, a dry journey, a smooth sail, a tumultuous sail, anything can happen..but in those first few moments where you release the certainty of shore, and cast yourself away and off, there is a feeling of freedom, purpose, an untetheredness that is hard to duplicate anywhere else in this life.  At least, that has been my experience. 

As we slide away from the safety and security of shore, we move forward into whatever comes next.  We are putting ourselves in the way of life in motion.  We are turning ourselves over to the sea and sky.  Giving over our freedom, lives and personhood to the fickle nature of open water.

Eventually, you have to paddle.  But I always try to put that off as long as possible.  To just sit idle in the space between the cast off and the journey.  I am not volitional.  I am not directing, forcing, intending, moving.  I am just allowing my entire personage to be afloat, adrift and without surety of direction or intention.

It is a wonderful space to be.  One that I do not experience nearly enough.  One that I will seek more in 2026.  For now, as the weather rains and threatens and is cold, I will reserve my experience of the cast off to memories and future tripping.  Moving myself forward into attempting to recreate that feeling in my here and now.  To be present and see if I can duplicate that fleeting, momentary experience of untetheredness in my every day life, the feeling of being unmoored, unrestricted while also very much in the way of peril and danger. To meet life where it is.

It strikes me that it is quite an experience to feel secure, safe and whole in a moment just before you put yourself in a place of such uncertainty...a place that is so very much poignant with the possibility for literally anything to happen.  Anything at all.  And for that moment to be so full and promising and complete.

I believe it might be like the moment that changes the in breath into the out breath.  That moment where we cease inhaling and begin to exhale.  There is a moment in between if we are paying attention, we can experience it.  And can last longer and longer in the in-between state if we are capable of being present, available and intentional about our minds.

If I close my eyes right now, I can feel my vessel moving, undirected, unintended across the water.  Perhaps I resist the movement and brace for impact.  Perhaps I soften myself and glide with the motion.  Perhaps I cannot handle it and begin my paddling in a mad attempt to assure myself some feeling of agency and control.  Perhaps though I close my eyes and just be with the glide, the casting off and aside all that I live on the dock, the shore, my life.  Perhaps I just live in the cast off for however long it lasts.  Perhaps I sit with myself in the fleeting moment of the cast off where all that I take for granted, all that I appreciate, all that I want and need is suspended for even the briefest moment in time and I slip, unburdened, untransfixed, unsure of what shall arrive, land, live, exist within me...I cast off all that I know, think that I know, believe, fear and live for that moment between my actions, where the impetus for change and growth and living happens...

Again, still...