May you continue to feel that way

I remember the first time I dropped into the warm Caribbean waters over a coral reef. I was perplexed. I was amazed. I was stunned. I was suddenly immersed in a fantasy world of brilliant colors, of thousands of fish swarming. Some content to sit still. Others darting at impossible speeds as if their lives depended on it (and possibly they did). The brilliant colors were too fantastic to have been engineered. Here God had taken a day off from the deep greens, blues and browns of ordinary life. On the day he created the reefs he laughed, he chortled, he was gay with delight and whimsy. Rather than the sublime majesty of the mountains and the sea, here he painted with a frenzy of unanticipated joy. The fish had been splattered with neon yellow, comical orange, brash red and brilliant blue!

Words from the SCUBA instructors echoed in my head - breathe, don't forget to breathe.

How could I have been immersed so abruptly into this unknown environ? At what instant had I recognized that my perspective had been so altered - when my eyes passed the water's surface? When my entire body had been fully enveloped by the salty sea? I couldn't recall the instant that everything had changed. I was rapidly losing my ability to recall what my model of the world had been just a few minutes ago. The frenetic action, the color, the mystique before my eyes asserting itself on my sensory systems, drowning out the ability to think clearly.

breathe.

breathe.

Barely able to process any thoughts in my reverie, I momentarily wondered. "How come no one else knows about this?"; "I really need to get out and tell a friend what's down here."; "Well, maybe later. First there's something over there that I want to go see."

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and she said "it just seems too good to be true".

and he paused. maybe not long enough to be noticed.

as he was wont to do, he selected his words with precision.

and he said with a smile "may you continue to feel that way".