Hearing Is Believing

I love the beach. Ours, here in Sarasota,Florida, is ranked #2 in the world so there's a lot to love about it.

One of my favorite things to do there is eavesdrop on other people's conversations! It's like being a peeping Tom but with your ears??

Voyerism... where would I be without it now?

It's just so much fun to hear bits and snippets of other people's lives. This one's making a deal with someone somewhere else, ear glued to his cell phone while his family focuses on the sand and the sun. That one moans about her boyfriend who - it's clear in my mind anyway - is just not that into her. Three old hens are cluck, cluck, clucking over the miseries of being seventy-something: nobody calls, nobody writes, and everything hurts.

It's not that what I hear is earth-shattering or life-changing it's that it ISN'T. Here we all are in this extraordinary space being absolutely ordinary!

Point? We are what we are. Each of us, whatever our circumstance, carry our baggage along even when we travel to paradise!!

The beach can't make a workaholic relax, can't heal a broken romance, can't make the old young. What it CAN do is share its beauty and link those of us there on a given day.

I'm in my neighbors' lives but for a moment but it's a moment I savor.