DREAMS, WISHES AND IMAGINATION

Before me is a beautiful picture on my TV screen. I’ve pulled up YouTube to a favorite site titled: Whispering Waves. It is every bit as beautiful as it sounds. The music is soft piano with the theme repeating itself over and over again with different variations. The picture is of a Mediterranean-style home set atop cliffs overlooking the sea below. Lights glow softly from its windows. It is surrounded by deep greenery, and palm trees swaying against a star-studded night. They twinkle as soft clouds skid across the sky.

The rocky wall below the home is verdant green with outcroppings of trees and bushes that extend from the side of the house and down to the sandy beach below, where more palm trees sway in the breeze and lush green plants fringe the beach. Small boulders and rocks crop up in the sand along the shore. You can still see the footprints in the sand, left fresh from daylight hours, or perhaps those left by someone seeking a moonlight swim. The water is smooth, interrupted only by the gentle lapping of waves upon the shore.

It is perhaps one of the most peaceful and “romantic” settings I’ve ever seen, much less imagined. When I look at it, my mind travels far away from the couch where I am sitting as I write this. It travels to places I have not been but dream of going. It takes me far away from the reality of this little apartment and fills me with longing … this lovely picture of the sea and waves lapping on the beach. The longing for tropical settings is not a new one.

I have been to Florida a number of times on wonderful vacations. This scene brings those to mind. I remember walking along the shore, my toes digging into the white sand of Sanibel Island, stooping over to pick up one lovely sea shell after the next and collecting them by the handfuls. Those moments are some of my most treasured. There was a kind of freedom there upon the beach, looking out at the vast ocean beyond. It set my mind to imagining all kinds of wonders and adventure. That adventurous spirit lies within me still.

Travel could easily be my middle name, for some of my happiest moments from childhood on have been visiting one sight after another throughout the United States, Canada and even parts of Mexico. Almost four years ago the travel bug took me to Ireland, my first overseas adventure. It is the land of emerald green, four-leaf clovers, leprechauns, sheep, ancient castles and stone walls dividing one property from the next; those stone walls possibly hundreds of years old and constructed entirely by hand … one large stone atop another with mud between. When you view them from the seat of a tour bus, they stretch out before your eyes far into the distance. Verdant green lives year round in the magic of the Emerald Isle.

As I sit here on my couch writing this and viewing the beauty on the screen before me, those precious and glorious moments of travel come up before my mind's eye, and I am set free in a way that no other thing can set me free … can set my mind to wandering beyond the known and the usual routine ... into the magnificent grandeur of God's awesome and exquisite creation. And a wandering mind is a beautiful thing because it takes you beyond the here and now, beyond the possible into the seemingly impossible … realizing that the difference between the two is greatly that of perspective. 

For there is no limit to where the mind and the imagination can roam. Without that precious gift of imagination, there would be no beauty in this world, for it is the creative spark in every undertaking that brings more beauty and harmony to our world. Human imagination created the video I am viewing before it came to life. The human mind imagined that poem, that song, that painting, that story that captivates and takes you to another place in space and time. Imagination is one of the greatest tools available. And it is free. 

REFERENCE

BLOG NAME: Whispering Waves with Piano

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: United States

https://www.youtube.com/live/UAdSqls4l1U?si=iqW9DO7NQ-vmxU05