Shore Lines

CRESTS AND TROUGHS Living with Change Within the hollow wave there lies a world, gleaming glass-perfect, rising to be hurled into a thousand fragments on the sand, driven by tide's inexorable hand…smooth mirror of the present, poised between the crest's `becoming' and foam's `has been.' Anne Morrow Lindbergh When I watch the waves breaking on the shore, I marvel at the darkened underside expanding as it approaches the land, the sun sparkling on its crest, and the shallow sands caressing it from below. For a moment, the wave hangs suspended as in a Japanese print whose climax is reached when its energies are released on the waiting sand. The ocean is always in motion. Wave after crashing wave echoes the changes that are part of all life. They have arrived on this shore in the past, they continue now, and will roll shoreward into the future long after I am gone. Rather than the popular image of mountain peaks and valleys, I like to think of the waves' crests and troughs as a more active and helpful way of thinking about the changes we experience. The trough --the curved bottom of the wave --becomes the down side of difficult times; the curling top --the crest --the peak of good times. The land-locked mountain metaphor is too static a view of living, a photograph in contrast to the wave's motion picture. For me, there is too much pessimism in the mountain image. Waves are a friendlier flow of movement, not as grand as the highs and lows of mountains and valleys, but closer to the rhythm of life's ups and downs. We have good times and bad. The experiences flow into each other as troughs and crests. There cannot be highs without lows; there can be no crests without troughs. A well-known tale tells of a Chinese farmer who owns a championship horse that one night jumps a fence and runs away into the hills, making the farmer very sad. The next morning, the horse returns leading a band of eight beautiful wild horses into the farmyard, and the pleased farmer quickly closes the gate. The next day, the farmer's son goes out to see the new horses, gets too close, and is kicked hard, which breaks his leg, making it impossible to help his father. Within a week the country's emperor declares war on a nearby country and sends officers to every village to conscript soldiers. Every young man in the village is taken except the farmer's son, who is spared because of his broken leg, which then brings joy to his father. The inevitable rhythms of good and bad events --the crests and troughs of our experiences --rise and fall throughout our life. These ups and downs are often most apparent in our work lives. I met Tom at a friend's party in Newburyport, a small city just north of Ipswich. Several years before, he had been a successful engineer working in a Boston firm from which he was laid off during the economic downturn in the 1970s. Tom loved coffee, or as he described it, craved coffee, and found it frustrating that it was so difficult to get a good cup of morning coffee in town. Being out of work and with a modest amount of savings, he opened a small coffee shop in Newburyport that became an immediate success. Because the shop was small, and, for him, easy to manage, Tom began to get restless and looked for opportunities to open a second shop. He found a little building in nearby Salisbury and opened another coffee shop there. But the location was not as good as the first shop's, and he started to lose money. Being a good entrepreneur, he broadened his offerings at both shops by adding ice cream to the menu, which increased sales at both locations. But not for long. Dunkin Donuts moved into town, opening a major shop on a busy thoroughfare not too far from his shop. Both of Tom's shops suffered, and he was forced to sell them both. The last I heard, he had moved to Florida and was doing very well after a return to engineering. In a relatively short time, Tom rode the crests and troughs of his career as he went from successful engineer, to laid off engineer, to successful businessman, to troubled businessman, to successful businessman again, to failed businessman, ending his career changes by becoming a successful engineer once again. In my role as a minister, I counseled a young woman who was devastated by a sudden divorce that left her with a minimum of resources and a maximum of burdens. Three years later, she relished her new freedom and was the happiest she had ever been. A man decimated by a surprise layoff that left him with few options and limited confidence, realized several years later that he was more fulfilled in his new work than he would have ever imagined. While there is no guarantee of an uplifting ending, from the bottom of the trough, we will, with patience, be carried to the crest to see a larger ocean of possibilities. The peaking crest reminds us to enjoy the present, the moving trough to have faith in the future. In difficult times, when a mountain creates a shadow in the valley, the bad situation can appear hopeless, the most debilitating of feelings. We then have difficulty focusing the energy necessary to start up the slope and can feel destined to wallow at the valley bottom. On the other hand, when we ride the crest of a wave, we are humbled in knowing that this time will not last forever. Riding in the trough, we know it will rise again, which gives us confidence in the natural flow of events and the inevitable healing of time.