A man is sitting on the beach alone.
He is dressed in a bright yellow Hawaiian shirt.
I have been walking on the beach
For about a mile,
Deep in thought.
It is getting late, time to turn around,
But first I will sit and rest.
The man in the yellow shirt
Represents a bright spot for me,
Like a beacon.
He is a sign for me to stop and gather my thoughts.
After I have been sitting for a few minutes
The man gets up and walks over to me.
He is young,
He politely asks what I am thinking.
I invite him to sit next to me,
Then I tell him that my wife is in NJ for three days
Visiting her sister
And while she is gone
I have decided to ask myself 3 questions,
One for each day she is gone:
Who am I?
What am I doing?
Where am I going?
He asks me which question is the hardest to answer.
I tell him that it is the last one
The one I am working on right now.
You see, I say,
I could make it easy for myself
Being 74,
And just say "I am heading for death".
He takes this in
And then he says
He enlisted in the Marines,
Discharged 4 years ago.
Now he works security for millionaires.
But every other night he dreams of combat.
Now all he wants to do is study philosophy.
He asks why I stopped walking
And sat down right before I passed him.
I thought for a moment and responded,
"Because I saw your bright yellow shirt.
The brightness of your shirt lifted my spirits".
Without missing a beat
He offers to give me his shirt.
I thank him but I decline his offer.
We keep talking.
Soon he is asking if I know anything about chakras.
"Yes, I do", I say.
"Your yellow shirt is the color of the third chakra,
Manapura.
That chakra must be important to you", I venture..
But I am really thinking
About how important it is to me!
In one resolute motion he pulls his shirt off
Over his head without unbuttoning it
And hands it to me.
Now it is dusk.
There are fewer people on the beach.
His yellow shirt,
Our yellow shirt
Glows brighter than ever
In the dim light
In which his white torso also seems to glow.
His body is covered with pentagrams
And there is one on his left arm
Depicting the intricate maze of a microcircuit
That trails down his arm.
I am a little overwhelmed.
This young man has helped me
Just when I was unsure where I was heading,
But as I walk away, back along the surf
I know exactly where I am going.
Of course, I am heading for death,
But first, life.
Indeed, I feel lighter.
I am thinking about how
With each wave,
Since the very beginning,
The ocean gives and takes.
When the young man asked me
What the easiest of the three questions was,
I said it was the first one:
Who am I?
"And your answer?"
My answer was (and is),
"I am footprints in the sand."
