Everyone Has a Story

Today is a Sunday, as you can see from the date above. I think everyone has a story to tell in life, whether or not it is a good story or a bad story. My one time surfing adventure to me, is a good story. To some it may be nothing more than something that happened to them, or never will happen. It may be something they can't relate to as there are things I can't and never will relate to. But that doesn't mean we can't try to understand their story's obvious or sometimes hidden meaning.

Life should never be one sided or closed minded. A guy when I first arrived in Guam, saw that I wasn't adjusting well to being so far from home and basically in a different culture. Frank Reyes must have seen the same thing in me, because he took me to see this guy. I never got the guy's name. I didn't ask and he didn't offer. I was looking off in the distant at the most spectacular view. It was on the north end of the island, on the base, and I was just zoning out. I must have had a stressed out look on my face as I was just dumped by my fiance at the time. So, broken heart, away from home, no friends, etc. I was just out of it.

The guy came near to me and said, " Come here. I want to show you something," in a thick Chamorral accent that was hard for me to understand. He walked me closer to the look out and said, "You see all that?" I replied with a nod of my head. He said, "No do you see ALL of that" with a sweeping hand gesture. I said yes. He glanced out in the distance for a few seconds, then back at me and said, "If you don't slow down, all of that doesn't mean anything. Slow down and that will mean everything."

It took a few months of getting off base and out into the island to understand what he meant. Once I figured it out, I kept it with me as a part of who I became in life. When I got married in '06, I forgot it. I was suddenly a husband, step father, and son-in-law. Until this class and choosing surfing as a topic I remembered what the man said. Now, with the past few weeks, I've been slowing down and I feel better for it.