Thoughts from the beach...

I took Zoe for a walk today. The upside of this move for her is that she gets a swim in the ocean every few days. If we forget, she will put her paw on your leg, look at you with her brown eyes and just push down. Anyway, I got the 'hint' from her this morning and we went to the beach. While we were there, I saw several jellyfish. One on the beach and one in the surf. Jellyfish are interesting. They rely on the tides, currents to get around.

While I didn't see any today, I know that there are salmon in the same waters where Zoe swims. As I watched the jellyfish float in the surf, I couldn't help but think about the strength and determination of the salmon. We used to go observe the Adams River Salmon Run near Kamloops. It's pretty impressive to watch thousands of salmon work their way up the river to lay their eggs especially when you consider the journey that they make in order to do it. It's no easy feat to survive 3 years in the open ocean, escape fishing lures, nets, natural predators and ulitmately swim up the Fraser River, through the Fraser Canyon, Little Shuswap Lake and into the Adams River. It's not the kind of journey that a jellyfish could make.

It occurs to me that life requires us to be more like salmon than jellyfish. There are times and seasons in our lives where it's okay, even necessary to float, but most of the time, getting to where we want to be requires us to swim, work against the current and overcome the challenges that stand between where we are and where we want to be. Keep swimming. You'll get there!