Message in a Bottle

The culmination of the series will be coming soon, but before we tread back into those waters, lets go with something a little more light-hearted today.  We have all heard of messages in bottles, either calls for help from ailing ships centuries ago or simply romantic letters thrown overboard on a whim.  But when was the last time this happened?   Well, a message in a bottle was found at the end of March on a beach on the Baltic Sea.  The bottle, with message still intact, was thrown overboard on a ferry trip by a 5 year old German boy 24 years ago and was just found by a 13 year old Russian boy.  Talk about delayed communication.  The message was quite simple, in fact fun in nature, an attempt to see if throwing a message in a bottle overboard would actually work.  The message simply requested that the finder of the bottle write back to the person who threw it overboard and he would then reply.  Simple, fun, and in the end exciting.  Surely the man, 29 years old now, had completely forgotten about the bottle and its entombed message.  I know I would have.  Yet 24 years later, he gets a response from a 13 year old and begins a dialogue between the two, nothing serious, just another potential friendship intitiated after 24 years.

In today's world of instant communication where we often feel slighted when we don't get an immediate response, it is sometimes good to remember that IM's and texts have not been around forever.  We live in a world today where we have almost completely forgotten what delayed gratification means when it comes to communication.  Granted, a message in a bottle was never a trusted method of communication, but it calls to mind a certain amount of imagination and speculation, wondering if that bottle will reach anyone and if it does, who it will reach.  In a twisted sense, it is like the internet (except with instant gratification), where we throw pieces of ourselves out into the unknown, often times not knowing who is viewing our missives or images.   With the internet, though, we know our content will be viewed by someone, maybe not many people, but at least a few curious souls.  But back to the bottle at hand.  I, myself have never thrown a message in a bottle out to sea, but this story stirs in me the desire to do so, to throw a something in the ocean, never knowing if it will reach someone or end up breaking and sinking to the bottom.  Messages in bottles today, can evoke childhood sentiments, those wonderful days filled with speculation and amazement at everyday life.  Maybe we could all use a little break from reality to throw a message out to sea in hopes of it reaching some far off land. 

Life is crazy.  I know that I tend to get caught up in the pandemonium of everyday life, making sure everything gets done and then distracting myself with useless things all to be repeated the next day.  I think we would all do well to revive the child within us, that playful, carefree person we used to be.  Not for an entire day, for then nothing would get done, but at least keep a playful attitude about us, a sense of amazement at the beauty the world has to offer, and excitement at those little surprises that pop up every now and then, like that message in the bottle.  We are all not going to find a message in the bottle buried in the sand on a beach, but life is full of little surprises if we just take the time to look around us and see them.  If you are in a city today, rushing through the throngs of people, take a few minutes, step to the side and watch the world go by.  Or if you happen to be driving a lot today, take a few minutes, find a beach or lake, and just park there and watch.  The world is full of amazing things, throngs of people to quiet nature, yet we often times rush through them not actually seeing what is going on around us.  An even better idea, to keep in tune with the article that I linked to, find a resealable bottle, write a little message, stuff it in and throw it over a bridge into the sea.  (Just make sure the police don't see you and give you a ticket for littering).  You never know, 20 years down the road or even 5, you may get a return message from a young boy who found it buried in the sand.  How cool would that be?