Step off the boat. Dead ahead stands a rocky face staggeringly separating the luscious green from the loose powdery sand, unadulterated and uncompromising, dry and solid, firm and soft. To the left and right the sound of the water slowly crashing against the beach. Waves so small you can step over them, but so defined you can’t miss them. With each wave washing off the perfect beach; your worries wash away with them. 

In front of me, a sea of tranquility, the cerulean water pulling at me efficaciously. A moment of perfect equanimity. I could sit for hours listening to the waves whispering as they meet the shoreline. You look out at the horizon and can’t tell where the water ends and the sky begins. All along the beach the water curls over and dissolves into foam as the sea breaks gently onto the shore.

 You could spend all day and not see another person. Empty for miles a beautiful, broad, peaceful, coastal front, isolated from the rest of the world. It shows everything, and then nothing. As the shallow turquoise water erases all trace. A place so hidden yet seen from space. You can smell the salt seeping into your nose as your tastebuds run wild. Always humid but never damp. The ocean, vast and empty and scary and daunting. Yet, so inviting. Where life began, holds all the answers. As I step into the water the warm current surrounds me, as the ocean takes me under its wing. 

As the day goes on the ocean rises and falls with the tides, forever changing. Perfectly still yet always moving. Perfectly calm yet always raging. Like the storm inside everyone, hiding its truth at first, but after a while, the hidden imperfections begin to be clear through the peaceful facade. Flat calm water is seen at first, but underneath a world unknown. A world open to all. I stand there where the ocean meets the sand, standing on the edge of uncertainty. Looking out at the vastness, and seeing myself.  Looking into a mirror and seeing more than a reflection, but under the water, the truth.