The Great Pacific

There's nothing quite as refreshing as feeling small..
A smooth rushing wave spreads towards you and everything else that's near, the sand beneath your toes stretches farther than you've ever been able to see before and you can't hear your company calling, who has shrunk with distance, shouting, trying to be heard over the crashing and rolling, in a world too vast and open to be concerned with things like sandy toes and pant legs dripping from water that unexpectedly rose too high. They don't mean a thing.

You step in and feel the pressure on your shins, pushing you back, pulling you in. In the end it doesn't matter which way you go.

You know you'll end up like the sea shells, washed up on shore, or what's left of them, broken into pieces, some so tiny they could end up as slivers in your sandy feet. The massive tide finally wore them out, and it was sudden, as you can plainly see when you pick up the triangular bits of remains.

But then, for a moment, you feel big again, at least compared to the broken shells. You must be more worthy of surviving than them, you think. Shells merely contain life whereas you are life, right? Is a body better than a shell?

And you feel small once more, watching the sun set. What light there is left illuminates still so much of a something that you wouldn't be able count in pounds or meters or single entities of other sorts. There is no measurement for beauty. It's everywhere, and you want to touch everything so that it may stay with you even when you're gone, or that maybe you'll have the honor of being able to stay with it.

But you feel as if you're not even there to begin with, such is your impermanence. Every footstep lasts but a few seconds on the shoreline. However, you are also glad that some things remain untouched and that some actions (however small) really have no consequences, no impact, and no trace whatsoever. This feeling brings a whole new meaning to having the weight of the world lifted off of your shoulders.

There's something freeing in being small. And yet, you are like the one shell that remans intact when the tide crashes in so violently and disrupts your peace, time after time. You see the others crack and shatter, the ones who could not wthstand its mighty power, but you stay strong, as small as you are, because as meak of a purpose as it seems, you can provide a shelter to life even more vulnerable than yourself. Your shell may be crushedeventually, but it's okay. You don't matter but for the life inside of you.