The Sea

You stand on the shores of the Sea. You are on a long white sand beach, a mass of miniscule crystals, more than could ever be counted. Behind you is an impossibly dense forest, with thick tall trees, and no light therein, even though it houses civilization somewhere deep inside of it. It is the wilderness from which you came, but you have no desire to return to it, not without first having visited the Sea. The sky above you is black as pitch, a starless night, heavy with many dark clouds. If it rains that will not matter, weather is of no consequence at this point. You can hear nothing at all, except perhaps a faint ringing in your ears, and you feel a slight breeze. The water waits for you, calls to you. What else can you do? You feel apprehensive, slightly, but it’s not enough to hold you back, to stop you from stepping into the shallows. You enter the Sea. At first you will only sit on the sand, as small waves crash meekly against you. It’s a period of boredom, of uncertainty, because you can’t just dive straight into the dark water; that would be rash. To go deeper into the sea requires time; wait for the current that will pull you in. Waiting is difficult, because you are impatient and have concerns, “does this current still exist? Have I erred? Perhaps I have been misled, and this empty beach is nothing but an imposter, accommodating an ocean of disappointment”. This goes on for some time, but you are a fool, for have you not visited this sea before? Was it not this same wait, this same test of patience? See now, how your body is plucked from the sand by an irresistible current, an omnipotent force of nature. You look up, at the infinite sky, rolling for ever unhindered, and you know you are moving at great speed. Before you realise what has happened, what has happened is no longer important, for you are stranded, alone, in the sea. You look back at the shore, but it is almost gone, nothing more than a distant speck in the distance.

You lie on your back and float effortlessly, as if the water lifts you up and carries you. You are perfectly still. You can understand everything, every piece of sensual information that you receive is clarified by the surrounding oblivion, the unimaginable weight of the surrounding ocean. Do you love yourself? You do, of course, why shouldn’t you? There’s nothing wrong with you, not really. Allow an explanation: everybody has flaws, of course they do. There are lots of things that you don’t necessarily like about yourself; in fact there are too many things to even mention. Ultimately though, the world doesn’t intend to weigh you down with these problems. Insecurities, physical failings, the cruelty of the people around you, and your own ineptitude, your own incapability of finding something in life that could make you happy. Do you understand? It’s not intentional, there are no forces which conspire together to beat you down and make you nothing. Of course we have to recognise that our problems exist, but at the end of the day, you are beautiful. You are a person who makes a unique mark on the world, the people who know you love you, and you love them. People are a blessing, their minds being incomprehensibly complicated and abstract works of art. It used to be so difficult for you to understand this simple truth about the world, but you have always known this, you will never forget this: life is pure bliss.

Suddenly the sky is covered by a film of dark water, and you know that you are no longer floating, but sinking. You fall into the depths of the sea, slowly descending until the sky is but a thought, and your reality is the darkness of the ocean. You need to swim, as to do so is a feeling of absolute and unrelenting euphoria. Movement is easy, and your body is strong. You make your journey. Although you are in the depths of the ocean, breathing is not a concern for you; you know that you will not die. You feel nothing of the water, nothing but its weight, making surfacing impossible. What of the surface? You dive deeper. What you can see is shrouded dark, but most things are visible. Beautiful rock formations surround you, and underwater vegetation sways in the ocean breeze. You see occasional fish, but you keep your distance. That’s wise, you don’t belong in this sea; the fish know this. It’s obvious by the way they keep their distance, acknowledging you as an intruder, their distant, disapproving shapes a dull blur, a potential threat. Regardless, you must press on; your time is running out. What you are trying to find isn’t entirely clear. It is possible that the journey itself, the joy of movement, is what you hope to achieve and hold on to. You hope, as your weave your way through the dark coral reefs, and forests of sea weed, that the end of your voyage through the Sea is some distant future, inevitable of course, but not now when the very act of existing has never been more of a joy.

It is at this point that your vision becomes entirely blurred, many bubbles obscuring your view. You look up, and there are powerful, heavy waves disrupting the surface of the sea. A sudden force sends your body spinning out of your control, you feel yourself being overtaken by a powerful current. Held down, then dragged in different and seemingly random directions, you are stuck, entirely beyond help. You cannot think at all, trying to comprehend your situation is impossible. The very nature of your thought processes is disturbed, it is like the power and violence of this tyrannical underwater current is tearing apart your very mind. By the time that you are able to think again, you are in a strangely familiar place, an unrecognisable world which you have known all your life. You are sitting in the shallows; your body entrenched in sand, while calm waters move with the tide to occasionally cover your body. You sit up, and look around you. You are on the same unending stretch of beach, the sand as beautifully white as it once was; a bed of crystals assembled by the moons subordinate waters. You look out at the vast ocean, above which there is nothing but sky as far as you can ever possibly perceive. A glow of dull, grey light has cut a swath through the clouds, and before you, at the edge of the world, dawn is breaking. The suns light, a symbol of a living world full of vitality and bright futures, breaks forth. To look at the sun, you know that you must leave, must return to whence you came. You slowly stand, though standing is a pain you bear with some unhappiness, some reluctance. You turn, slowly, and look back to where you were cruelly expelled from. The water has already retreated towards the sun; the tide pulls it from you every day. Before you there is a desert of dampened sand, you cannot reach the water unless you cross it. Alas, the desert is not for you, let others task themselves with chasing that sea forever, a perpetual pursuit which is in itself a living hell. You must turn back, back to the dense jungle behind you. That is where you can live, where you can be fed and nourished. Other people are there, people that you know and care about. A future is there for you, a place where you can grow old and die with purpose and ambition. It promises much, this jungle, this comparatively civilized world, the world where you have lived all your life, but it couldn’t stop you from visiting the sea. Though the water is gone, it will one day revisit these shores. As you step forward, to escape the growing light of the burning sun, you want nothing more than sleep. Your eyes are reddened, your skin is dry and salt encrusted, and your mind is reduced to its most basic cognitive functions. You think that this will be the last time that you must walk away from the shore, back into the world, as the world can harbour you forever. A glutton who has eaten more than his fill will curse his pain and discomfort, and vow to be once bitten but twice shy. What a hollow promise! You’ll realise soon enough. There is much for you to accomplish and enjoy in the wilderness of man, you can find love, occupation, friendship and purpose, but you’ll never forget the sea. Soon you’ll creep back for its mysterious pleasures, its seductive indifference towards you, and so fall again, like an anchor, into the deepest depths of hopeless joy.