A Life That Dwells in The Ocean of Truth

Caroline Watkins
Caroline Watkins

I came across this phrase from an article entitled As a Man Thinketh by James Allen; and although I can’t really wrap my head around it, I do think it’s lovely.

And I recalled it after recently watching a Ted Talk given by Roz Savage, the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean.  I was already familiar with her story as I had watched a documentary on her feat at the Banff Mountain Film Festival in 2012.  Ms. Savage left a high-powered career as a management consultant in London after preparing two versions of her own obituary- one on the life of adventure she wanted and one on the “nice, normal, pleasant” life she was leading.

She says this: “With little going for me other than unstoppable eagerness, a sense of total commitment, and a stubborn refusal to give up on what felt like a divinely ordained scheme, I cast myself upon the waters of the world’s oceans.”

She has since rowed across not only the Indian Ocean but also the Pacific, the latter in three stages and all in a 23′ rowboat.  She mentions that she was able to face her nearly insurmountable fears on the ocean more readily because of what she feared MORE: returning to the life she knew – a life where, admittedly, she “had it all.”

Last week I saw the leading actress in The Birds, Tippi Hedren, interviewed following the movie’s screening at the Virginia Film Festival.  I found her fascinating, too. She is 83 yet looked from my relatively distant seat in the theater to be 63.  The skilled film critic who conducted the interview told her with a note of awe in his voice that she had led a well-lived life.  What struck me was the undeniable fact that she was still living her life…fully!

An unexpected connection between these two vastly different women formed upon further reflection.  Although they were each proud of their “worldly accomplishments,” they were infinitely more satisfied with where these accomplishments had brought them – to a place of giving back.  Ms. Savage’s was in the form of an effort to clean up the plastic “landfills” accumulating in our oceans and Ms. Hedren’s, in the form of an effort to eradicate the domestication of wild animals.

Now I shall circle back to truth.  I once touched on Don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements, the first of which is to “be impeccable with your word,” and my discovery that it may be just as important to be impeccable with the words we speak to ourselves as it is to others.

I thought about how Ms. Hedren and Ms. Savage embraced their respective truths, which propelled them forward into a life of meaning and significance.  Ms. Hedren’ s truth was her deep love of wild animals and Ms. Savage’s, a deep unhappiness with her life at the time.

I considered the distinct possibility that we can be quite adept at telling the truth to everyone, but ourselves.  Yet when we do, real and lasting change can happen and the ripple effect of this change, beyond measure.

In the act of listening to the truth and responding to it, whether it be in the form of instinct, intuition or that still, small voice – what I believe to be a whisper from the Holy Spirit – “the seemingly random circumstances of life,” according to Oswald Chambers, “become pinholes through which we see the face of God.”

And this, my friends, may be the most beautiful Truth of all.

– Caroline Watkins

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