Holding Flippers with a Sea Turtle

When I was eleven, I found myself lying on my stomach on a black sand beach in Hawaii, staring into the wise, old eyes of a massive sea turtle. I lay there for the majority of the afternoon, communing with the creature, and he taught me one of the greatest lessons I've learned in this roller-coaster existence that has been my life.

No. I'm not crazy. I don't actually think that the turtle opened its mouth and spoke to me with words, but he did teach me something radical and beautiful, and I would like to share that lesson with you.

So, what life lesson could I learn from a sea turtle on a hot winter Hawaiian day with tourists surrounding me and taking my picture for their scrapbooks back home?

Well, for the little girl that I was those twenty-five years ago, simply lying on the sand with my bare skin sticking out of my bathing suit for the hundreds of tourists to see was quite a start to my journey of self-acceptance.

I have always hated my body, and I started hiding my shape and skin long before any girl should even be thinking about such things. I spent my childhood bullied about my body, and that day a turtle taught me the most important lesson I've ever learned about the people around me who make me feel uncomfortable -- To heck with 'em!

Though we were surrounded by loud, oppressive, uncaring tourists, that turtle just laid there, basking in the sun, letting the waves wash the sand over his scarred and chipped shell with what I can only assume is the turtle equivalent of a smile upon his face.

He showed me the meaning of contentment. Both I and the tourists were trespassers on this ancient basking ground that should belong only to his kind, but that turtle tolerated us. It was his beach and his time, and he would not let anyone's presence keep him from what was his right.

This might seem like a stretch to you, but he taught me how to find that kind of peace within myself. For the first time in my life, I learned how to exist in my own body and mind - my own space and time - without hyper-focusing on the people around me and what they thought of me.

There were tourists standing all around me, taking pictures of me and talking loudly and annoyingly, and I tuned them out. This was unprecedented. It was the beginning of insight and change. It was the beginning of my acceptance...

My acceptance of myself.

Of course, you are probably wondering how I know that he wasn't simply tolerating my presence in the same way that he tolerated all of the other masses of tourists.

I know because of what he did next. After a couple of hours of me lying in front of him and slowly inching my way closer, that turtle looked into my eyes and pushed himself closer to me.

I remember tensing up and bracing myself for his bite, thinking that I had gotten too close and had alarmed or upset him, but then he did something truly extraordinary that laid all my doubts to rest.

That turtle lifted himself up and placed his flippers (yes, that's what they're called) over my hands and laid down with his nose right in front of my own. After a breathless gasp escaped my mouth, I stared into that turtle's eyes, savoring his breath on my face and returning his smile.

I relaxed completely. I closed my eyes and forgot the world around me. I let myself be content and at peace in a way that I would never have thought possible.

It was only about another hour that I was able to rest with that turtle before a well-meaning but misguided bus driver chased me off, and though I was brought back to the land of cameras and tourists and self-conscious thoughts, I have never forgotten the acceptance that I received from that turtle.

So, what's the last lesson? It's a lesson that I have been trying to remind myself of every day since, but it's the most important one. That turtle reached out to me, and he told me that no matter what the world around me is trying to make me feel or believe about myself, I can still occupy my own mind and my own space. I can still be me.

Almost three decades later, this experience still brings tears to my eyes. There is something almost otherworldly about experiencing wildlife in this way. Knowing that he not only allowed and accepted my presence on his beach but actually embraced and welcomed me into his solitude left me feeling accepted by more than just him. It taught me who I was and that I was someone special.

So, who am I?

I'm the sort of person that a sea turtle will hold flippers with while he basks in the sun.

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