Message in a bottle

Have you ever send a massage in a bottle?
I had the idea of sending a message out a few years ago.

So I looked for a bottle that would be able to hold my message and after rejecting a few I found the perfect one. I had never seen a bottle like that and, being the explorer that I am, I tried to learn as much as I could about the kind of vessel I chose for this journey.

Now the writing, what kind of message could I possibly send into the world? I had put so much time and effort into finding the right bottle that a simple “hello” would not suffice. I wanted to send something that would make sense to another, something profound but not pompous, something touching but nothing sentimental, something the other could relate to without it being too personal. This goal seemed to high at times and there were many days where I wished I could go back to a simple bottle with a simple hello. But by now I had made an image in my head of “the other”, that images and the bottle on my desk kept reminding me of my initial intentions.

By thinking about the unknown other and placing myself in their unfamiliar shoes made me rummage through the things that we must share. Things like pain and fear, joy and love, the sense of belonging and the feeling of being alone and slowly but surely my message formed. Exploring my side of these things and by walking a few miles in unfamiliar shoes brought me new perspectives and left me with no reasons to hold on to the familiar and claim it as truth. It took what seemed like forever to find a proper ending to conclude the message but I finally did. After reading it and rereading it, rewriting it and rereading it again the message said: “I’m done, I’m told and I’m ready to be send”

I placed the message in the bottle and there I was, at the line where water meets land and certainty meets uncertainty and I could feel a war raging inside me, letting go or holding on. I looked back at the person I was when I started this idea and smiled, than looked at the person I had become at the end of this quest and smiled. Gently I placed the bottle in the water and saw it being swept away by the tides of change and I smiled. Knowing I had no longer any control over it filled me with a sense of relieve and sadness. Knowing that I’ve picked my bottle and words carefully gave me a feeling of wellbeing and gratitude that was unfamiliar to me.

Over the days and week that followed my mind drifted back to the bottle floating in the ocean of opportunities and I dreamed about “the other” that would find it. Those dreams went from bright pink in where the bottle would end up on a white beach where a handsome stranger would find and read the message and become instantly and forever happy, to dark gray where the bottle would be smashed to pieces and the message got eaten by sharks. I was surprised at how I would wake up from those dreams filled with emotion; after all, I let it go, didn’t I?

The weeks became months and as the tides of changes ripped through my life, the memory of the message in a bottle faded. But the writing continued and so did the quest. I found words of others that were on a similar quest and found things that were lacking in mine. Was rudely awakened many times by the real realization that you should walk the walk if you talk the talk and was overwhelmed by moments of profound joy. Pieces I found along the way began to sink in deeper and I saw that I am “the other”, the handsome stranger and the shark and I could feel how we all suffer and I became conscious of what makes it so and where it will end. It could very well be that all who embark on this voyage will come to the same conclusions but it is I who had to do the walking and be willing to go that extra mile and not just take anyone’s word for it. Having said that, words of others were great and at times instrumental in helping me on my way.

Words like:
“Our consciousness gives us the ability to empower ourselves through choice and experience compassion for ourselves and by extension compassion for others.

(a kind stranger)

Slowly but surely I am becoming a softer version of myself and see “the other” in a softer light and as I visit and revisit words of others I form my own and I get to know “the other me” even better.

And then an unexpected miracle happened, I got word from “the other”, the familiar stranger found my message and said hello and thank you. It filled me with immense gratitude and sense of wellbeing that felt strangely familiar and that’s more than enough for me.