Gift of the Sea

We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of love of relationship - we leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb - we are afraid it will never return.

We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity, when the only continuity possible in life is as love is in growth, in fluidity.

Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was in nostalgia, or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now. For relationships, too, must be like islands - one must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits - islands surrounded and interrupted by the sea, continually visited and abandoned by the tides. One must accept the security of the winged life, of ebb and flow, of intermittency.

Each cycle of the wave is valid; each cycle of the tide is valid; each cycle of a relationship is valid.

From Gift of the Sea by Ann Morrow Lindergh.