About book Beachcombing At Miramar: The Quest For An Authentic Life (1997)
Quoted from the book:"The events of my life are like the rolling of the waves, the changing of the tide, the shifting of the wind-they contain no judgement. My parent's death was not a tragedy, my marriage not a mistake, my career not a miscalculation. They were the course of my days, the pattern of my years, the flow of the life that was given to me, and the I lived it."Bode leaves the city life to find himself on pilgrimage and became a beachcomber in Miramar. In the course of this middle aged man, he began questioning about his past choices and regrets that made him to live simply at the beach . It's a good read for someone like me who's still in struggle for identity. It's not about knowing where you come from. It's about finding the authenticity of yourself as an individual from the moment when it feels so vague. This book made me questioned about fitting in to being yourself, from regretting to dealing. It made me think about my technicalities as an artist. For people who keep on striving in-style, without even knowing what to strive for. I realize that somehow I'm too. We keep on maintaining an image towards selves, knowing your'e too control until loses your will to be real. 4.5 stars. It's a worth read.
I first read this book several years ago, but I picked it up again, well, mostly because I am a displaced waterman. And since I am currently entrenched in this high and dry place, I have to experience the water vicariously much of the time. However, what drew me to the author Richard Bode in the first place was the life lessons he shared in his classic book "First You Have to Row a Little Boat". So while it was the water that drew me back to this book, I found his musings on a life well lived, and how we have insulated ourselves from nature through the modern entrapments of speed and commitments to be an important reminder. I also appreciate how he teases out the connection between this rushed and excessive lifestyle and the violence that is pervasive in our culture/world. I can see how some might find this all a bit sentimental ("navel gazing"), but for me it resonated, and I think of Miramar as a West Coast Walden. And once again I found this short little book to be a delightful read.
Do You like book Beachcombing At Miramar: The Quest For An Authentic Life (1997)?
Ok, leaving it all behind and living my days out walking on the beach is a dream for me so I loved this book. Bode leaves a job from which he was deriving no personal satisfaction and a lackluster marriage to become a beachcomber. He gets a beach house at Miramar Beach, California, and uses his time walking the beach and ruminating about sand dollars, jellyfish, and the mist and tide in his self-described journey to the center of himself. The days and nights of irregular and random beachcombing allow him to reflect on who he is, who he wants to be, and what it means to be human. This striving for an authentic life makes this book sensitive and worthwhile reading. It’s one of those books that you stop reading a segment and just reflect on your own life.
—Karen
