Swings: everlasting joy.

Ever since I can remember I have always been passionate about swings. I love the way they make you feel like gravity is optional, like a breeze is ever present, like you're flying, like you're important. I most commonly compare the feeling to flying without wings, ever since I read the Goosebumps book "How I Learned to Fly" I think I always associated it with that similar feeling of flying that jack gets when he flies around at night (nevermind the fact that I always wanted to be Mia "a young girl who is always wearing hearts on her earrings, wrists, socks, and so on" - because I love hearts)... I have always loved swinging at night.

I told a friend at work about how I love swings, how I take long night walks to calm myself and sort out my thoughts, and how those walks usually take me to a swing set where I can stay and swing for hours. Since I told him this he has always poked fun at me for liking swings - even though he said "no, it's cute." he still always makes snooty remarks, which is totally fine because they are they funny.

So today, I was feeling a little off a little before sunset and I set out for the beach. There is this lovely swing set up on the sand where you can watch the waves crash, and the kids dig and run and play, and the dogs prance, and the couples hold hands. It's perfectly placed way back where not so many people are, so you can notice life without life noticing you. For me, that's where I put my life on pause and my worries in the hamper to be washed away - that's where I smile at nothing, and everything.

While I was swinging I received a text from that fellow co-worker who pokes fun at me about the swings, and I told him where I was, he lives near the beach. Out of boredom he set his anti-swing pride aside and came to join me for a while. He sat awkwardly on the swings, and joked about how it gave him awful childhood flashbacks and how he felt creepy swinging there... and then he asked: "Why do you like them so much?" in this same moment something in the world aligned - because WHY I love swings so much is a hard thing to describe, I just do - and from a few swings over the happiest, most bubbley, giggle and laugh fit came from a little girl who couldn't have been older than three and as we looked over at her, she looked over at us and as our eyes met she vocalized a perfect: "WEE!" and continued to giggle. Her mom had just pushed her on the swing a bit, and turned away. She was so happy. and I looked at my friend, and I said: "That's why." because in the full twenty minutes we were swinging by her, all she could do was giggle and smile and look over as I dug my feet in the sand and say: "I'm beating you! I'm higher!" between giggles and smiles... She was so cute.

That is how swings are supposed to make you feel. That is how they do make me feel.

When I have problems I can't solve, thoughts eating at my emotions, anger I can't shake... I find swings to sit on to help me fly - fly away for a brief time and as I get further with every swing, every problem shrinks with the distance - I can see them as a whole and sort them out, or see them for what they are and just let them go.......