Why be a human when you can be a sponge?

Babies relate to sponges more than anything else in the world. They absorb everything around them; sights, smells, sounds, touch, and taste. You can always see the gears in their always growing brains turning, taking in everything they can and putting it in a special filing cabinet to save for later.

Why does our sponge of a brain dry up as we get old? When do we decide it’s time to stop filing new smells, sights, sounds, tastes, and touch? When do we make the presumption that the person walking next us on the sidewalk doesn’t have a story we want to hear? When in our life did it become more beneficial to look down at our feet or phone than to look up at the world and absorb all of it?

The Gulf Shores of Alabama was the first place I noticed I was missing out on the simplicity and power of my 5 senses. I closed my eyes and took time with the greatest and free gift the world has to offer, the world itself.

The smells came rushing. I could smell the small things like sun screen fresh out of the bottle and plastered a little too heavily on the child’s back; I could smell the big things like the never ending breeze of salt coming off the water to tickle noses. The scent of beer from visitors failing to hide them lingered, the smell of BBQ from a picnic nearby, and a little bit of a grandmother’s perfume that was too strong for the beach was caught in the breeze.

You could taste the sea salt that stole all the moisture from your mouth to create a little desert. It was saltier than over seasoned French fries from a drive-thru. All of the little grains mixing to create a concoction in your stomach strong enough to make you sick. The only remedy is to wash it away with something just as sweet as the ocean is salty. My pick was a slushy from the nearest gas station.

The touch from the sun, Earth’s natural fireplace. You don’t have to reach very far to find a shell, rough and left behind from a critter. Each grain of sand, special and different from the other, the South’s version of snowflakes, so soft and delicate. You could feel the ocean giving the world a tight hug.

And finally, when I opened my eyes and could connect the other 4 senses with my sight, it was like seeing the beach for my first time again. Each feature outlined and highlighted, put together so perfectly like an 1,000 piece puzzle. I could see the picnic I smelled earlier, I could see the waves I had heard crashing, I could see each small grain of salt I tasted in my mouth, and I could see the warm and darling sun I felt on my skin beating down even harder on crisp sun burns.

The world starts to become beautiful again when you remember your roots of being a sponge.