I, Coconut

I was comfortable there, where I listened to the sea breeze high up in the palm trees. I would watch the surf come in. I would contemplate the mother turtles who came in from the ocean to lay their eggs in the sand. I studied the gulls as they would dive down into schools of fish.

I weathered many storms there and grew round and fat. Happily I hung in the sun, all the the flowers of paradise blooming below as the bees buzzed about, tending them without rest. I knew all the birds, each with different colors and calls. Never once did I consider my purpose, I thought life would always be this way.

Then one particularly breezy morning I was suddenly released from my perch without warning. And now all I know is falling for what seems like forever. Down, down, down.

I strike the trunk from another palm, and am sent rolling across the sand. It is very coarse despite what it looks like from above. I stop near the water line and consider my current situation as the sun gets nearer and nearer to the horizon. Every new wave seems to be coming further up the beach until a large one laps up around me, lifting me out of the sand. I am then pulled out into the gently rolling surf, adjusting to this new cold and salty environment. I dance and bob in the invisible current, and it takes me further and further from where I began. Further from everything I ever knew.

My island now out of sight, I begin to doubt that I will ever go back. Thinking about this I float across on an open ocean, rising and falling with each passing wave. Content with the cool ocean, with the deep darkness beneath, happily gazing up at the stars in the deep darkness above.

Days pass, weeks pass, months pass. Nothing. Just me, the sky, the sea, and nothing but time. Land will surely come some day, and I will become a beautiful palm. I will drop my own seeds in the ocean to be planted on other distant lands. I bob up and down, completely happy.

But everyday it does not come. Land begins to become a hope rather than what would seem an inevitability. Maybe there is no land where I am going. Soon I stop looking to the horizon, knowing that it does no good.

I wait for an unimaginable time, and am bored for I have memorized the stars, and can count the minutes from sunrise to sunset as they increase and decrease through the seasons. I can map the moon to every detail. I can name all the fishes of the ocean, I can tell you what the whales have been saying to one another. I have counted the days.

I have not seen land for seven years and five months.

Still I cling to life, though it is of no worth. Still I withhold myself from the very God who has created me. In all this nothingness I remain hard and to myself. My husk still tightly wound around my rich center.

Then the clouds came, but not like before.

The waves rose up and became mountains before me. Pulling me into themselves before throwing me out into the wind. I would then hover over immense valleys before splashing back down deep into the blue depths. I float up to the surface slowly, all the while witnessing the silent flashing spectacle above. Gasping for air I resurface again only to be pulled by another mountain. This happens time and again. I am thrown into the flashing sky, the rain pelting my husk. My inner sea having it's own storms.

I finally surrender.

Complete abandonment of self. A coconut in a typhoon, completely given up to you, drifting along the currents of the ocean of your will.