Small fish drifted past the orange Garibaldi hovering a few yards below my dangling feet.

I didn’t know what the small fish were called. Names shouldn’t matter, but I guess they do matter, especially if that name is God.

A lot happens at the behest of that name.

I meditated on the slow current beneath me while I waited for a wave.

God is fickle, isn’t it?

The name, I mean.

Fickle, because the meaning changes depending on which side you’ve taken. 

There were a lot of surfers this morning, on all different types of boards. Longboards, shortboards, standup paddle boards. The standup guys were catching every wave, thanks to the competitive advantage found in leverage, furious paddling, and huge boards. Everybody else was just kind of floating around, in some kind of us vs. them purgatory.

A small swell rose on the horizon, and I paddled further out in the hopes of escaping one of the standup guys. I felt a touch of frustration in my gut as I dug deeper with my arms and the standup guy pawed with increasingly ferocity at the ocean surface. These paddle-battles were not why I was in the water. I was here for those small fish and the Garibaldi under my feet. I was here for the salt on my skin, the sun on the back of my neck. I was here for connection in a world of separation.

I was not here for us vs. them.

And so, I backed off, letting my arms fall motionless into the ocean as my board slowed to a lilting drift, until small fish drifted past the orange Garibaldi hovering a few yards below my dangling feet.

I didn’t know what the small fish were called.

But they were swimming in God.