That Time I Stepped on a Sea Urchin and Why Every Little Moment Counts
I stepped off of a surfboard right onto a sea urchin. In an instant, a day at the beach became a foot full of sea urchin spines and a bumpy golf cart ride to the emergency room.
On a sunny morning in Mexico, I set out to find a surfboard to ride. I asked the security guy at the beach where I might find one and he sent me away with some pesos and directions to a nearby restaurant, saying they would know where to find one and to grab him a Coca-Cola while I was there. Sure enough, the restaurant manager gave me directions to a surf shop down the street and I made my way back to the beach with a surfboard in one hand and a Coca-Cola in the other.
I had taken a surf lesson once a couple years back. So I confidently started paddling out, knowing little to nothing about surfing.
There were lots of people surfing, and one guy gave me a valuable piece of advice: since this was a rocky beach, there were sea urchins everywhere. So even though the water was fairly shallow, he told me to avoid touching the bottom.
I followed his advice to a T, being careful to not touch the bottom after every wipeout (there were quite a few of those). But I also managed to catch a few waves and had real good time.
After a little while though, I got tired and started paddling in. I was just a few feet from being beached when I decided to step off the surfboard and walk the rest of the way in.
I lowered my legs off the surfboard into the water and stepped right flat on a sea urchin. The photo above is the exact moment I stepped on it.
The Precision of the Moment
What if I had stepped just a few inches to the left?
Or what if the tides were different and the movement of the ocean led me to a different spot at the shore, a spot without sea urchins, and I simply walked up to the beach without issue?
In the precision of the moment I chose to paddle back to the beach, the time it took my to get there, and the place and position I chose to step off my board in the rocking sea, I stepped right onto it.
All it took was one fleeting moment, and the course of my day was changed.
It’s a Beautiful Thing, You Know
As you move through your days, you never know which mundane action, movement, or little choice you make will lead you to a profound moment.
At any moment on any random day, you could meet your soulmate. You could meet a stranger that winds up connecting you with the future boss of your dream job.
Every conversation has the possibility to make you realize something about your own life, and therefore lead you to make a positive change.
With all the things you see, people you talk to, events you witness, and moments you live on a daily basis, you never know when you’ll realize your next dream.
With every possibility of something going wrong, there are twice as many opportunities to learn and grow.
Any moment on any day could be one that gets added to the collection of stories you tell throughout your years on this planet.
What Happened Next?
So I stepped off my surfboard and landed right on something sharp. At that point I didn’t know it was a sea urchin, I just knew my foot hurt because I stepped on something real pokey.
As I was limping my way up the sand, I remember thinking, “There’s no way that was a sea urchin. I’m just being dramatic, it was probably just a rock, I’m literally fine.”
When I sat down, my foot was covered in sand so I still had no idea what was going on and why my foot hurt so much. With one pour of water over my foot, the sand washed away, and my foot was looking like a pin cushion.
We called over the beach security guy, who called the medic, who took one look at my foot and said “Oh no I can’t do anything about that, you’ll have to go to the hospital.”
I rode to the hospital in a golf cart and sat on a hospital bed while the doctor worked at getting the sea urchin needles out of my foot. The needles are barbed, so you can’t just pull them out. The doctor worked at them with a scalpel and I’m not gonna lie, it didn’t feel great. I was offered pain meds to numb the pain, but I said no because I wanted to be able to snorkel later.
Nonetheless, I survived. The moment passed, the days went on, and I wound up with a story to tell and a new awareness of something I never thought twice about in all the times I swam in the ocean.
