A Year in Love - Just Keep Swimming

One of my favorite movies is Finding Nemo.  I love its rich palette of colors and ocean panoramas and I adore the enduring and love-affirming story that is told. 

Marlin, the clown fish, constantly worries that something bad will happen.  Despite his best efforts to protect his son, Nemo from the dangers of the ocean, Nemo is kidnapped and Marlin is forced to journey through the same scary ocean to find him.  Along the way Marlin bumps into Dory, who innocently offers to help search but turns out to have issues of her own.

Dory is my favorite character of the movie.  I can identify with her short-term memory loss some days.  What *did* I do five minutes ago?  LOL.

When I first watched the movie, I believed Dory represented complete and total ignorance, but I don’t see Dory that way anymore.  Now, Dory is a great example of how to live in the NOW.  Nothing was negative to Dory.  She saw everything in a positive light and was the perfect counterpoint for Marlin’s ‘negative nelly’ perception. 

Where Marlin saw deadly floating explosive mines, Dory saw party balloons. 

Where Marlin saw man-eating sharks with rows of razor sharp teeth, Dory saw friends.  

When Marlin saw the scariest deepest darkest trench, Dory saw the color black and sang a song, “Just keep swimmin’, just keep swimmin’, just keep swimmin’, swimmin’, swimmin’”.

While Marlin beat himself against the whale’s baleen trying to escape, Dory floated back and forth in the sloshing water, shouting ‘Whee’ and enjoying the ride.

Marlin saw a scary unfriendly Ocean.

Dory saw the entire Ocean as a fun place to be, as her own personal playground.

At the most critical point in the movie, when Dory and Marlin are hanging from the whale’s tongue by a fin to avoid falling into its gullet, Marlin asks “How do you know that nothing bad will happen?” 

Dory replies “I don’t.”  And Marlin let go.

I see that as the ultimate in trust and faith.  In that moment, Marlin trusted Dory and her intuition and as a result learned to trust his own heart.  She couldn’t guarantee Marlin’s safety or that bad things would NOT happen but she trusted enough to know that things would work out, that in the end everything would be okay. 

Dory was willing to accept any outcome regardless of what it was.  She lived in her heart, her inner child, committed to the present moment.  Dory represents how to stay blissfully and innocently in our hearts and still navigate life’s Great Ocean.

As of Sunday, February 19, 2012, we’ve entered a new age.  Neptune has returned to its home sign of Pisces for a 14 year visit in order for us to plug into our higher self, psychic abilities, intuition and connect with our source of Love.    

I feel it’s time for us to live our lives like Dory, in complete Love and Trust of the Universe.  To Just Keep Swimmin’.  Ride the tide.  Go with the Flow.  Enjoy the ups and downs, laughing and shouting ‘Whee’!  We are to live not in worry and fear of the bad things that could happen but in Joy and Love and expect the Universe to provide the very best - to know that we live in a Great Ocean of Love and Light.