81 – Passageways *

Special thanks to Fraggle for providing the photos. Fraggle is in the UK and I encourage readers to visit her photography blog Fraggle: Rocking a camera across the universe. Please tell her I sent you and feel free to comment on her images here. All images are copyrighted by Fraggle and Fragglerocking Photo Blog.

Click the video above for 2 minutes of background waves while reading.

I like to walk on the beach. It is good for the mind, body, and soul – and refreshing on my feet.

I’m looking at the water that seems endless. I know what I see is only a tiny fraction of this water because I only see the surface – and to think all this water, including the water below, is only a drop of the world’s water. But this water can lead anyone to many places.

Today I’m thinking about passageways – something that one passes through on the way to somewhere or someplace. Passageways are an access – a corridor, alley, tunnel, street, or path – a breezeway, archway, entrance, gate, door, aisle, catwalk, or hallway – a ticket, key, or passport.

A passageway is an invitation – a way to make sense of where we are and the opportunities that lie ahead. Well, as long as one has an open mind. I see the whack line left by the most recent high tide serving as a path guiding my way – a gateway to keep walking. Yes – an invitation.

Sometimes we identify passageways by an arch with a buttress, arches over doors, old city gates built in medieval times, but still present in Europe. Arches that span, vault, support, and even decorate passageways old and new. We associate arches with gateways, buildings, architecture, national parks, landmarks, St. Louis, and McDonald’s.

Windows are a passageway of gaining a perspective – but only if we see them leading to something better or at least an explanation.

Corridors are more than a narrow hallway because they also have to do with shipping lanes, flight paths, and tracts of land – yet all of these are passageways.

I like cruising for a vacation. Passengers start by following the passageways through the port terminal and up the gangplank onto the ship. The ship’s passageways are from large doors to grand staircases to the narrow corridors of the cabin area.

While our senses are a passageway into the world around us, eyes are also the passageway to the person’s soul – so look. But through the ages of time, the eyes also are the passageways to the depth of poetry and proses. Hearing is the passageway way to music and lyrics. Our senses and mind also use the arts such as writing, painting, sculpting, theater, and more as passageways to a fuller life.

Every personal encounter with someone new involves the passageway of possibility – mentor, friend, confidant, lover, or just a positive person who lifts us – but will we face them with an open mind? Could it be the love at first sight that opens the passageway to the heart? Could it lead to a professional opportunity?

Creativity and innovation must pass through the passageway of risk where one may encounter the door of fear – but how we face risk and fear will be part of our fate with the challenge.

Ellis Island in New York City was the passageway to a new world for immigrants during the great migration – a passageway my paternal grandparents stepped through. However, I know this scene occurred for many across the world as they entered a new land.

I firmly believe the more one knows, the more they realize how little they know because there is so much to learn. Perhaps as I look across the water, this is a sea of knowledge serving as a passageway to knowledge. There is so much water – so much to learn – as well as with more depth than we realize.

Mathematics is the passageway to a greater understanding through a language that is much more than equations and calculations. Science offers one passageway of knowing and understanding the natural world. But science does not corner the truth about everything because other disciplines such as ethics, history, philosophy, psychology, theology, and other social sciences can enhance a perspective.

While learning is the passageway to knowledgeable adventures, life experiences are the passageway to wisdom, humility, pain, joy, and empathy for others.

Looking around as I stand, I notice the passageways: the water surface, the horizon, a hole in the clouds, balconies and doors on buildings, constructed walkways, gates, shells, and more. All passageways that my brain linked together into a common theme – a theme worthy of my thoughts as I walk. After all, I like walking on the beach because it is good for the mind, body, and soul – and refreshing on my feet.

See what other bloggers have posted about adaptations

• Narrow Passageways (two photos and a paragraph)
• Endless (a poem)
• The Passageway (a short story by a visitor here)
• Flashback Friday #2 (photos by a past collaborator here)
• Freak Alley Gallery (photos of murals)

Next Post: Nature – Saturday 5 June @ 1 AM (Eastern US)

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