0414
For a long time, life felt like a fight — with time, with approval, with love. I don’t really recall feeling safe in them. Each day I just kept moving, often in exhaustion, hoping not to fail.
In my mind, though, I kept searching for a place where I could lose it all — a place where I could stop striving and rest in deep silence.
One afternoon, on a quiet beach in Hawaii, I finally found it. The sky was cool blue. The ocean looked soft and clear. Without hesitation I went in. The water was cold, but it didn’t bite too hard.
As I entered, the world above fell in silence. All I could hear was the ocean’s gentle hymn. In the water, I didn’t have to be smart, strong, or certain. I just had to be. And for the first time in a long while, I floated. I wondered how far I could go if I stayed.
But I had to come out in the end.
Not because I wanted to, but because the world was still there, waiting for me to go on. Responsibilities, people, time — none of it paused just because I did.
I rose from the water slowly, as if waking from a long, dreamless sleep. Before I wrapped myself in a towel, I looked back once more: I watched the waves continue to come and go. I then thought about what it meant to rest. To not escape the cold, but to move with it. To surrender, and to return with quiet persistence.
In fact, I didn’t drift too far — that would have been dangerous. I knew that. Even in escape, I always stayed close enough to come back. I couldn’t abandon what mattered — I had people I loved, people who loved me, places to go, a life to question and fulfill.
And then I saw it: how each moment is connected.
The floating and the returning; the stillness and the striving. Even when life broke my heart, in time, the same life offered me solace. A wind. A breath. A reminder that perhaps dreaming and waking aren’t quite the opposites — they’re part of the same movement.
So yes, over the years I’ve learned how to dream and still live in reality. How to hope and still cry. How to lose, and still return to myself.
