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NEWSLETTER | JANUARY 10, 2025
In With Abundance
I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions, but I do like to take the beginning of the year to set out some intentions. This year, I’d like to do more surfing and more personal writing. To help me, I have started keeping a “wave journal,” jotting down my thoughts any time I come back in from a surf. I note the time and tide, a memorable wave or wipeout, and any glimpse of wisdom the ocean has to share.
I recently read The Serviceberry, a new offering from Potawatomi botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer, who encourages us to think in terms of abundance, instead of scarcity, and I decided to apply that thinking to my surfing. I tend to let impatience push me too close to shore, then get taken by surprise by bigger sets. Now, instead of getting down on myself when I miss a wave or get crushed by a breaker, I take a moment to remind myself that there’s no shortage of waves and no shortage of time to catch them. I take a deep breath, paddle myself into a better position, and get ready for the next one.
I’m happy to report this has worked incredibly well, allowing for calm and focus in the surf. Last week, in fact, I caught one of the best waves of my life, on a day with waves so small I almost didn’t even paddle out.
Back on shore, I jotted this lesson down in my wave journal, and, because I’m a word-nerd, I started wondering about the origins of the word “abundance.” I learned it comes to us from Latin, from abundare, which means to overflow. Deeper inside the word is undare, “rise in a wave,” and deeper still we get unda, from an ancient word for “wet.” So not only did I get a great lesson from the ocean, but I also got a jolt of serendipity. Abundance, indeed.
As a journalist steeped in climate coverage, I need moments like these. We all have plenty to worry about. Our politics are getting crueler, the planet is in peril, and nature’s out of whack. Even as I write this, a major swath of the country is recovering from brutal winter storms, and Los Angeles is confronting multiple devastating fires. But to think in terms of scarcity, to only see what’s lacking (or horrible), is to miss the gifts that bolster us. Good things do happen. Progress does happen. But it comes in increments, like droplets of water, so small you might miss them, drip, drip, dripping toward an overflow.
Brian Calvert
Associate Editor, Earth Island Journal
Photo by Linus Nylund / Unsplash
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