The Beach

[Barry]

The Beach: A Parable

There once was a beach upon which two men stood facing one another, each holding a gun pointed at the other. Neither pulled the trigger; for each feared the other would see the movement and pull his own trigger, ensuring death for both.
They stood in the waves, water rising and falling from around their ankles to up over their knees, and at times even higher.
The water was cold, and relentless. The waves never stopped coming and going. The two men were buffeted and battered, pushed and pulled. Their feet sank into the sand on which they stood; they had to constantly adjust their footing. But the two men never wavered from pointing their guns at each other. There was no question of doing so.
On occasion came a much larger wave, about every seventh one, and the two men then feared for their lives.
But not more than they feared one another.
Out of the corners of their eyes, they both kept watch on the waves, all the while staring straight at each other, never dropping or diverting their gaze.
The strain of holding their guns out before them was great. It tremendously taxed their strength. It seemed impossible that it could go on, but it did. Their hands would shake. Their arms would grow weak. Sweat, despite the cold water in which they stood, would break out all over their skin. They did not eat. They did not sleep. They only stood, each afraid to turn away first. For to do so, both knew, meant certain death.
In time, as must happen, both men grew weak. They were supremely fatigued. Their bodies wasting away, both now stood only by unfathomable effort of will.
Far out to sea both men saw a wave larger than any yet seen rising. Both saw furtive panic in the eyes of the other. Both sought to gain advantage from what in the other was seen as weakness.
As the water pulled back from their feet and the wave rose towering above them, both men set their feet into the sand, set to lunge one at the other, meaning to wrestle the gun, one from the other and end this tiresome stand-off for all time.
Both men read the intent in each others eyes.
Both men resolved certain to be quickest, to be the victor.
And as the wave crashed down upon both, they did lunge at one another.
In the freezing chaos that fell upon them, both men lost grip of their guns, both men flailed and struggled beneath the cold water, spinning and turning, ground against the sand, tossed by the wave, until neither one had thought of the other left in their heads, primal self-preservation subsuming all else and only love of life remaining.
In that moment, when each man was sure he would now die, each alone, neither threatened nor assailed by the other, both brought down alone by cold, hard nature, the two men reached out their blind hands in the darkness swirling around them, and both men found the hand of the other.
In that contact sang the promise of survival, the fierce beauty of life, the possibility of coming out of this alive. Both men gripped fiercely the hand of the other. And from that grip, both men gained strength, clarity of purpose, renewed vigor. And as the monster wave receded, both men stood afresh on the beach, their hands empty, their guns lost in the surf. And neither sought to look for and retrieve them. Both men stood and looked anew one upon the other, their hands still clasped one in the other, and both men began to smile.
They were alive. They had lived through it. They had helped each other through their mutual trial.
They had survived.
The two men standing on the beach moved up and out of the surf. They clapped each other on the back and embraced. They laughed with the sheer joy of having triumphed over death together, no longer enemies, but now friends forever.
And both men knew, as they looked deeply into each others eyes, that they were one and the same.
And that they would never again forget.

Peace,
Barry

[Barry]

I might not have made this clear. This is a parable of the Cold War. Some may think the US won the Cold War. We did not. No one did. Or has yet. We're both still turning beneath the cold, hard chaos of the monster wave, reaching out blindly in the dark with our hands. Will we ever make contact and find survival together? I have hope.

Peace,
Barry