I changed my mind. Social media can be magical. ✨
How I discovered that my "spirit animal" is a basking shark 🦈
I hid for a long time. For good reason. Being visible = being vulnerable.
But visibility is also empowering and publishing one’s writing/art online can be downright magical. I’m secretly part Luddite (someone who resists technology) and have definitely resisted social media. In fact, in 2015 I deleted my Facebook account for a year and a half and never missed it. Not once.
But in the past 12 months my take on this wild web of internet media has been changing due to beautiful encounters that have happened via Substack, Instagram, and Facebook. I want to tell you a story about the sweet serendipities that connected me to a phenomenal creature that plays in the water of Keem Bay, Ireland, half a world away.
A couple weeks ago my friend Robb came to visit us in Baja. We go back a decade and had a wonderful time hanging out, having heart-to-heart conversations, hiking, dancing, and showing him this little pueblo mágico town that is our home.
One of the things I cherish and admire about Robb is that he’s a basker. He has a way of savoring life’s delicious moments with such immersive, fully present delight. It’s inspiring and contagious and it was great fun to watch him bask in Baja.
After he went home I felt moved to post a few photos from his visit and share how Robb inspires Alan (my partner) and I to savor life. Writing that caption gave me a little more insight into my friend and the secret of savoring life. If you like, you can read the actual post below (251 words, 1.5 minutes).
It was quite fun to publicly celebrate my friend and pleasant to see some ❤️s and 👍🏻s of appreciation for my little story on the socials. Then came a comment from my friend, Amanda.
I so enjoy those moments where someone shares something and we see the world a little differently. Apparently, Amanda sighted sharks on her trip in Ireland and noticed they seemed to be basking. At least, that’s what my presumptuous brain concluded…
Turns out, Amanda didn’t see sharks basking she saw basking sharks.
Amanda dropped this video into my DMs. I hope you’ll hit play and give yourself a mesmerizing moment of watching these funny-looking and exquisitely graceful creatures swim like dancers slowly weaving in and out of each others’ orbit. Stunning and peaceful.
Isn’t that beautiful?!
As the gentle Irish music played it slowly dawned on me that the title of the video also had the word basking, and it was capitalized—indicating that it was a noun as much as it was an adjective. So I opened a new tab and searched “basking shark” to see if basking sharks were an actual thing. What popped up answered my question, and much more.
The kismet (destiny, fate) Amanda spoke of appeared to be rippling out, wrapping me in waves of wonder. It felt like I was being handed a divine gift. I had to share it.
I sent a message to Robb that there exists on this amazing planet a BASKING SHARK! Not only that, but this being lives its days swimming around with its mouth wide open, hoping to filter as much food as possible from the water and does little else.
Now that is taking basking to a whole other level! Basking as existence. Basking as survival.
Or what if it’s not next-level? Maybe this is the level Life itself operates on.
Maybe basking is the most natural thing in the world. Maybe hunting isn’t the only way to survive. Maybe we can also swim through life, wide open to receive, gathering what we need.
Maybe this is my path. Maybe it is time to fully let go of my well-intentioned-but-short-sighted, labored, effortful striving to make things work and weave through the ocean of life allowing nourishment in instead.
This paradigm shift from making things happen to allowing life to happen is something Robb and I talked about quite a bit during his visit. It’s a rewiring process I’m currently in. For me, the last month of 2022 was an intense journey of being undone. So much of what I’d built, externally and internally, professionally and personally, fell apart. From that place, I honestly didn’t know how to exist in the world; let alone talk to people, strategize business, and generate income.
The last several months have mostly been a journey of recovery and listening. Listening for how to proceed. Trusting life to reveal the way. And also to take care of me along the way. (Not because of spiritual brilliance, but because I had no other choice.)
It’s been a process of discovering how to do things differently. Less control. More basking. None of which had to be explained to Robb. He simply messaged back, “It’s your new totem!”
And that is how I discovered my kinship with the basking shark.
Thank you, Amanda, for the way you show up on Instagram, both super-smart and heart-on-your-sleeve. Thank you for sharing the wonder of your kismet moment shark experience with me. 🦈 Thank you, Robb, for being a walking reminder of the art of basking, and for being my friend and cheering me on.
And thank you social media platforms, who despite being engineered for newly devastating levels of addiction, are also a place for magic. The magic of art and community. These digital tools are in our hands. Which means they can cause painful disconnection AND facilitate wonder-filled connection; connecting real humans with real stories of real humans. And also sharks.