Turning inside out over the sea and beyond

Sometimes people are gathering on the beach for a special occasion. During the season you will see various training courses, weddings, sports, business parties and the like. Once the Autumn winds really have changed the ambience, the public shrinks into its hard-core visitors. The dog walkers, the lonesome strollers and joggers, the fishermen, a few Zanderlings, the shell collectors, horseriders and sand bikers. But the remarkable group I watched today surely forms an exception on this general pattern.

When I stood still on the dune top, I saw a dense group of people, standing close together in a circle. Probably listening to an explanation or instruction. They were not dressed for a special beach sport purpose, but they were wearing a casual city outfit. I wondered if this could be the latest outward bound management approach for some sales department or administrative section. It did not look like a jolly outing. The group stayed close together without further change of form or individual action for a rather long period.

In the meantime I crossed the laguna canal, strolled alongside the surf for about a quarter of an hour, took my photo’s, looked around if perhaps a seal would show up. And only when I came wading back through the stream, I saw that they had started to move around. In a very odd and unfree way, I must say. No individual stepping aside, running away or walking aside. The group circle was larger now. But everybody moved slowly in an unnatural way without colliding or hindering each other. Nobody sitting down on own initiative. If it was some kind of training course, it looked unemotional, unattractive, uninspired.

Too many brave and dull quasi actors without a clear and visible stage manager. Nobody protesting. Nobody looking around, singing, dancing, talking, touching...What invisible motivation would bind these twenty individuals into this meaningless group behaviour, I asked myself. What can be the use of exercising non-communicative turning around other people, like train travellers do on a platform waiting for their train to come? So Grateful and Happy I feel, that I am free to go where and how I want. Free to follow the tide and the changing of the winds, the moving of the sun, the appetites of my soul, the deepening of my spirit looking far out into the sky, over the sea, in search for the horizon and beyond.