“You’re disturbing the rhythm of the beach,” the woman said to Mark. She had walked up to us while we were playing paddleball last Saturday morning, soon after our arrival at the beach. I was standing a few feet away and didn’t immediately catch all that she was saying due to the noise of the wind and the waves.
She had asked how long we’d be playing. The noise of the ball being hit back and forth was annoying her. “It’s kind of like a dripping tap,” she explained.
“How long will you be here?” she asked Mark. “Three weeks,” he replied. The woman evidently thought he was be facetious, for she flashed a one-finger salute and said, “Yeah, and I could say ‘Fuck you’.”
I had moved closer by this point. I chimed in, “We play two or three times a day for 15-20 minutes.” She thanked me for my succinct response.
Meanwhile, Mark had volunteered that we would cut short our game. “I’m going swimming now anyway,” he said.
This is where I balked. We hadn’t played our complete game and I thought we should continue. After all, it’s a public beach. But Mark has been a good example to me in situations like this. He simply withdraws, rather than deal with the feelings of contention, anger and anxiety that such situations provoke.
So, we walked away. Mark went swimming while I sat down to write in my journal. After ten minutes or so, the woman who had confronted us came up and sat down beside me. She thanked me/us for quitting, saying that she hadn’t intended that we stop our game. She had just wanted some quiet time on the beach.
She asked me how long we’d be here, and I replied, “Three weeks.” “Oh!” she said. “So he really meant it. I thought he was just being sarcastic.”
She then asked about paddleball, saying that she hadn’t played since she was in high school. “And I’m 70! – so that was a very long time ago.” She then thanked me again, got up and went back to her spot on the beach.
There were several things I learned from this experience. For starters, I saw in action the Buddhist principle of “walking away” and creating good karma. Mark had refused to engage with this woman. Our actions brought forth the best in her, and our subsequent conversation resolved a conflict.
Secondly, I saw yet again how each person has a story. If she hadn’t come up to talk to me, I would only have known her as the bitchy woman who had a problem with guys playing paddleball on a public beach. But in our short conversation, I saw a different side of her and intuited some of who she is as a person.
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