Introduction
(Draft of beginning chapter to “Diary of an Ocean Lover”, working title to a memoir.)
Can it be that our individual lives from beginning to end as spiritual teachers say is merely a script already written? That the only choice we have is to either resist or surrender, resulting in whether in the end we can say we enjoyed the ride, or feel bitterness and disappointment? My guess is that this truth or, on the other hand, woo — woo theory, is really the same as asking: ‘God’s Will or my will?’
This morning as I write, still in the beginning process of putting my story to paper, I’m not sure what the truth is, although I have always gravitated to the spiritual, reading the esoteric authors and studying the prophets and spiritual leaders in history. Perhaps by the time I finish writing I will have found the truth. In any case, I am happy to report at this later stage in my life — as I write I am 73 years, 3 months, and 23 days old, not that numbers get us any closer to truth— I can appreciate and am grateful my life has been a great adventure.
It is my joy now to describe it to you, an attempt to capture in words to the best of my ability with a desire for great satisfaction to share with you with pleasure and lessons as well. This writing venture has been long, at least a half a dozen years so far, and certainly longer in seed, with many starts and stops, stretches of energetic writing along with long periods of procrastination. The most difficult challenge, yet the kernal of my best descriptions, has been identifying and tying together the sub-themes of my life into a coherent and interesting whole, brought along by one overreaching arc and main theme — my love for the ocean, its sounds and shapes, and most important, its energy. My lifelong passion has been to intimately connect, and ultimately unite, perhaps even merge with Nature and the Truth I find in the sea. My hope is that in my ability to persuade you that this natal force is your inheritance as well, that you, too, will discover this Divine Gift if you haven’t already, finding its life-long attraction an invisible force within you.
Today I have the advantage of looking back on my life in long perspective, hopefully with enough honest self-reflection and accumulated wisdom to make the lessons and knowledge I’ve achieved, not without great pain and frustration, interesting and worthwhile for you. I once hoped that I could capture my life story in one series of riveting stories, starting with my first dip into the ocean as a toddler off Balboa Island in Southern California holding my Mom’s hand. I would then proceed with other stories of my childhood and teenage years, including the one of great import and adventure running away from the shadows in our home at age 16. I would consolidate these first two decades and more of my life into the era of my journey I’d call “Running Away”, not just from home, but after I left home for college, from myself.
As friends, relatives and therapists attest, it was from our narcissistic father, of course, that I fled. Bernie Reich profoundly abused our Mom, sister, Danna and me, mentally and emotionally for his entire life. My youth was complicated. As much as it was propelled by the need to connect with Nature, it came from the need to run away. But I was one of the very fortunate abused ones. There were incredibly wonderful redemptive aspects of our family life. And it didn’t hurt there was family wealth. But several saving graces lay in both our Mom and Dad’s characters, which I did not learn to appreciate until much later in our Dad’s case. More about this later. But for now I will say that although I was destined to love and embody the sea through our Mom’s attraction to it, it was also our Dad who fueled my passion and drive to it. This, by the way, will be a recurring theme in my story, that in the recesses of our minds where our cruel frightening shadows hide, lie the truths and paths to joys and love.
Unfortunately, life does not present circumstances and experiences in more than a few tidy stories like the time I secretly purchased and stored a small motorcycle until the most opportune day to take off from home and head north to my Uncle Joe’s house in the mountainside enclave of Montclair in Oakland, California. Yet knowing that reflecting on these other experiences will not so easily convey a seamless theme causes me to reach deeper in mind and heart to find a coherent meaning.
Fortunately, I can draw on classical literature and biblical allegories, i.e. Siddhartha and the biblical story of the Prodigal Son to help me. It was no coincidence, and an argument for providence that I gravitated to Herman Hesse’s books in college to read in my escape from the reality I was flunking the required courses I disliked. I ended up reading most of his published books in my 20s. Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud were also very important figures in my life. I was drawn to their discoveries of the unconscious beginning at the university at Santa Barbara. Initially, I fled to them attempting to draw understanding and relief from my inner pain. Eventually, however, it was for their work on dreams. As you will learn in this Memoir, I have nurtured an active and potent dream state that feels more real than life. But for now, I draw your attention to Campbell’s formation of the four recurring stages of a human’s “Mythic Journey”: The Calling, The Quest, The Illumination and The Return. “These distinct stages chronicle the unending search for meaning and heart in our lives,” explains David Gordon, psychotherapist, in his book, “Mindful Dreaming.” It is the search for our Grail, he says, “or as Campbell called it, ‘our search for bliss.’”
