A friend from Montana recently moved here to the Bay area. She’s having a time adjusting to the Bay area, of course, it’s so different from remote, spacious Montana. (After I moved to Montana, I understood more clearly what “Big Sky” country means. The mountains are so huge and dramatic, they make the sky look VERY big.) She now lives near the ocean in San Francisco, and the ocean has a very different energy. The mountains, she says, “made me feel secure and grounded. I felt safe living next to the mountains.” Here, she says, the ocean is wild and exuberant. She doesn’t feel so safe.
Lately I’ve been pondering the notion of our world as metaphor. In my opinion, everything in this beautiful world has meaning and depth to it, beyond what we see on the surface. And if that is true, the terrain of where we live must be constantly “working” us on many levels. Like my friend, the mountains in Montana also made me feel safe, but maybe I left Montana because I needed a different metaphor to live within. The Pacific ocean keeps me feeling like I’m in the flow of life. It keeps me inspired.
