Chelonia

Sometimes I wish I could live two hundred years.

And I often find myself thinking what I would do with all the extra time I would have. Maybe travel the world; maybe see things I never saw before.

It had been a rather rainy day, and as I lay on the sand, listening to the crashing waves, I tried to find a cloud with a shape that could tell me what it all meant, but the clouds were shapeless, drifting along with the soft breeze in their endless trip, and in the swirl of colors from the sunset and the sublime scent of the salt I slowly sank away into the world of dreams.

I thought I had slept for just a minute, but when I opened my eyes the stars were shining deeply in the sky and their beauty and their secret messages washed over me as though telling me to be quiet and listen. And so I did.

Among the waves and the wind and the distant noises of the world there was the faint sound of a thousand years, of a million miles, of a giant heartbeat.

I slowly sat up and looked around, and then I noticed a shape in the darkness right in front of me. I froze. Not with fear, but with curiosity, for this shape was not one that should make me afraid, this shape was lethargic, nostalgic, and it made me feel a little sad and yet, it filled me with a smile that I could not contain.

She was coming out of the water and quietly creeping into the darkness, almost by my side. She lifted her eyes and looked at me, and in a second I saw into the depth of her mind, into the lifetimes that she had lived, into the unimaginable things that she had seen. We held each other for a while, she measured me up and then she talked to me in a raspy voice, she said:

“Young one, such a short path have you wandered, so many other beaches you have still to see before you can even call yourself a grown man”.

I had so many questions for her, but I knew that I wouldn’t understand the answers, and looking into her eyes I learned that the questions were a good place to start anyway. And I realized how easy it was to see the world through our own judgment, and to believe that us, who have only turned around the sun a few times can realistically ascertain the truth about everything around us, and how flawed this idea turns out to be.

Because when a turtle looks at you and she can see who you are, and you know that she comprehends you to your deepest thread because she has seen you before in remote places; then you realize that we are a long way away from wisdom.

I didn’t move as she made her way into the darkness, and when she was but a shadow in the night, I respectfully took my leave from her and thanked her for bestowing upon me that single piece of perspective, one that I often forget.

Sometimes I wish I could live two hundred years, sometimes I realize how very short a time that is to learn anything at all.