Leaving Places Unfinished

When we come to a new place we have plans. We have dreams and we say so. We say things like, “We’ll do this before we leave”, and, “Yes, that’s on our list of things to do”. And inevitably, we leave without completing all the things to do. There are always things left undone. At least, that’s always how it’s been with me.
I fell into the trap of thinking for a while that it was just because we leave places. In our seven years of marriage, Joe and I have been longest in Okinawa: two years and nine months. In that time, and the shorter times around it, we have made many yet-to-do lists and failed to cross off many things on the lists. Sail boating in North Carolina, bull fighting in Okinawa, and things that we just missed getting to in Hawaii, like a trail that goes through a tunnel and the Japanese Village Walk in the mall.
It’s easy to leave thinking we failed, thinking we didn’t do the things that we were supposed to do. It’s easy to think that we should have gone out a few more weekends, that we spent too many nights at home. (Hello, we have small children. We spend all our nights at home.)
And then, halfway through this regret filled diatribe, I remember Nebraska, and how I lived there for 22 years and still left with things I meant to do. A basketball game, that new restaurant downtown, sledding that specific park, trying that one sandwich at the small local restaurant I only ate at once.
So maybe it wasn’t about me being lazy after all, and maybe laying fault upon myself is not the best way to view the situation. Maybe it’s just that the world is bigger than me (shocker!), bigger than my life and small moments within it. Maybe it’s that things are always growing and changing, and if it’s not me that is moving on then it is something else: a place closing before I had a free night, or four rainy weekends in a row on a weekend with a festival, or promises of new places opening right after I leave.
So now I remember: if I lived in a place where I could do everything, wouldn’t that be a terrible place to live? And, even more important, wouldn’t it be a terrible place to come back to? Why would I want to come back to a place where I had nothing left to discover, nothing left to explore?

Little explorer.

But still, the other weekend, as we did our last sandbar trip with friends, I tried for the island on the horizon. Four palm trees and (if I squinted) a yellow sandy beach. It was the first day without wind we had been out there, and the first I had felt up to the task, so I dug in and headed out, wanting to check that one off my list; that distant spot of sand surrounded by the breaking turquoise waves.

Sometimes it looks closer then this.

And halfway there I realized it was never going to happen. Not only were there others back at the boat waiting to use the board, but the island was a good deal farther then it seemed. While from the boat it seemed manageable, close enough to reach, when I started to tire I was far enough away from the boat that I could barely see the people, and still the island lay in front of me.

Looking back at the boat.

These islands, these things we mean to do, sometimes their distance shocks us, sometimes it really is harder to make our way to things then it seems like it should be.
But, at least for me, my trying is never wasted. On the way, the clear, sparkling waves splashed gently just a few inches above some of the higher coral, and shadows of flitting, fleeing fish scurried above the bright sand. And a turtle, unused to people this far out in her domain, took one look at my big shadow and swam scared, faster then I knew a turtle could.

No time to chat.

And if I hadn’t tried to finish my list I would have missed the way the bright, shallow water held the diamonds made by the sun, the highlighted waves stretching out to the horizon farther than I could ever reach.Taking the time to find things bigger than us can never be a waste, whether it’s a too short journey over the water, or the acknowledgement that the places we inhabit are bigger than our small selves.

Our small selves.

It turns out, yet again, that it’s not the destination of the island, or the finishing of the lists, that matters in the end. It’s the trying, the getting there, and the things I see along the way.
And always, having a reason to come back.

What a good reason to come back.