This short, uncomplicated but vastly inspiring book was written by the author while taking respite for two weeks alone in a simple cottage on the beach at Captiva island. She collects five shells: channelled whelk, moon shell, double-sunrise shell, an oyster bed and a paper nautilus, all of which prove symbolic of the different stages in a woman's life. Her thoughts form this beautiful book--- her gift from the sea. Not surprisingly, I find this book so timeless and maybe even more relevant now during our busy days of multi-tasking. The one book I reread in January each year.
'I began these pages for myself, in order to think out my own particular pattern of living, my own individual balance of life, work and human relationships.'(opening line)
'The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach---waiting for a gift from the sea.'(17)
'My shell is not like this, I think. How untidy it has become! Blurred with moss, knobby with barnacles, its shape is hardly recognizable any more. Surely, it had a shape once. It has a shape still in my mind. What is the shape of my life?'(22)
'But I want first of all---in fact, as an end to these other desires---to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can.'(23)
'I have learned by some experience, by many examples, and by the writings of countless others before me, also occupied in the search, that certain environments are more conducive to inner and outer harmony than others. There are, in fact, certain roads that one may follow. Simplification of life is one of them.'(24)
'What a circus act we women perform every day of our lives. It puts the trapeze artist to shame. Look at us. We run a tight rope daily, balancing a pile of books on the head.'(26)
'The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask.'(32)
'Only when one is connected to one own's core is one connected to others, I am beginning to discover. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.'(44)
'Perhaps middle age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego. Perhaps one can shed at this stage of life as one sheds in beach-living; one's pride, one's false ambition, one's mask, one's armor.'(84-85)
'When each partner loves so completely that he has forgotten to ask himself whether or not he is loved in return; when he only knows that he loves and is moving to music---then, and then only, are two people able to dance perfectly in tune to the same rhythm.'(106)
'For relationships, too, must be like islands. One must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits---islands, surrounded and abandoned by the tides. One must accept the security of the winged life, of ebb and flow, of intermittency.'(109)
'The waves echo behind me. Patience---Faith---Openness, is what the sea has to teach. Simplicity---Solitude---Intermittency ... But there are other beaches to explore. There are more shells to find. This is only a beginning.'(Closing lines)
a Pantheon book edition
128 pages
Book owned
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