At the Edge of Everything

The ocean doesn't care that you're watching. This is what makes it worth watching. It was here before your name. It will be here after your grandchildren forget your face. This is not sad. This is the most comforting thing I've ever learned. I bring my problems to the shore and they shrink. Not because the ocean offers solutions— it doesn't, it offers scale. It says: you are this small. And this small is allowed. The waves don't repeat. I know the science says they do, but stand here long enough and you'll see— each one arrives with its own argument, its own shape, its own way of saying the same thing differently. Like people. Like days. Like the way you can love the same person for twenty years and still be surprised by the particular way they laugh at something you said that you didn't think was funny. I come here when the world is too loud. When the answers are all wrong sizes. When I've forgotten that most things are not emergencies. The ocean reminds me: breathe in, breathe out, come forward, pull back, let go, begin again. It has been doing this for four billion years without once asking why.