130. GIFT from the SEA

Anne Morrow Lindbergh 1955

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

39. MAN'S SEARCH for MEANING

Victor E. Frankl 1946

This highly recommended book is the author's personal account of finding meaning (even beauty and love) in his everyday existence and suffering at a Nazi concentration camp. It is a reminder for everyone that: Attitude is everything and most of everything is a choice.

"He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how."

"Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone."

"Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!"

"It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself--be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself--by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love--the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself."

"At that moment I saw the plain truth and did what marked the culminating point of the first phase of my psychological reaction: I struck out my whole former life."

"Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run--in the long run, I say-- success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it."

"Pleasure is, and must remain, a side-effect or by-product, and is destroyed and spoiled to the degree to which it is made a goal in itself."

"In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice."

"It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual."

"Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

"A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes - within the limits of endowment and environment- he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions."

"I do not forget any good deed done to me and I do not carry a grudge for a bad one."

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way."

"Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized."

"When we are no longer able to change a situation – just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer – we are challenged to change ourselves."

"For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love."