The boy followed his father through the palms to the sand. When his feet touched sand the boy ran toward the waves, then a sharp left. He darted along parallel to the surf. Down the beach a ways he found a broad swath of wet sand and dug the toes of his right foot into the sand, hobble stepping around until he’d drawn a big circle in the sand, twice as wide as he was tall.
If you’ve done this yourself you know it takes concentration not to lift the foot that is serving as your stylus. It’s an awkward and muscular art form, with unruly media. No wonder, then, that upon completing the circle—the very moment that his right toes plowed the final push of fresh sand into the valley where he’d began his mark—the boy’s brown face shifted from pure earnestness to unfettered victory.
“I did it!” he announced.
His father was already in the waves out of earshot, and the boy wasn’t announcing it to me, and I feel confident that he hadn’t been given instruction to do the thing that he was announcing that he’d done. So I’m left with complete admiration for this boy’s initiative; for this boy's self-determination; for this boy’s audacity—independent of any audience—to ensure proclamation of his incomparable accomplishment.
Once the circle was made and his victory sufficiently proclaimed he sprinted after his father into the waves, and left me sitting in the sand gobsmacked with inspiration.
Some people spend their days drawing lines in the sand, building walls, making barriers. These have their function, I suppose. But straight lines are a flirtation with abstraction. Walls are built to crumble. Barriers invite trespass. The lived world is alive with shifting curves. Curves circle the world.
Let’s practice curves. Let’s be like the boy who makes circles bigger than himself. Let’s make circles bigger than ourselves, then bigger than those, then bigger than those. Let’s circle the world with circles that shift, then dive into the waves with victory in our throats.
