I chose to write about the world today.

For the first in what seems like a very long period of time, I sank my toes into the sandy shores of a beach. It’s fascinating how the mind - through a fluid concoction of memories and images provided to us through films and photographs, conjures a standard picturesque idea of what one expects to experience in a place or time.

At this beach, I didn't see sandcastles or ice-cream trucks, nor did I see stripy deckchairs or picnic blankets. I didn't even see the sun, as it was too shy to greet me today, and hid behind the comforts of the thickly layered clouds that blanketed the blue sky above and around them. This beach was the polar opposite of what I’d allowed my mind to naively visualize for me in the many years of beachly absence.

 Although it’s June and what should be the peak of this year’s summer, there was a chill to the ocean winds that bit my cheeks and tore my lungs with every sharp breath inhaled. But standing on the steps that met the dunes; with the touch of cold grains of sand between my toes, I decided I preferred this new image of the beach to that I had once previously stored in my mind. I liked it like this; vast and empty. Only a handful of other people were here, but the salty breeze that I could taste just as much as I could smell covered their subtle footprints as they walked way out in the distance. The tide was already out, and the damp sand stretched out for what seemed like miles. One could only wonder how long it would take to touch the waters of this shore.

 I realized how easy it is to forget majestic beauty like that when you’re obligated to partake in the strict regime of social contribution. It seems as though there aren’t ever enough hours in the day to appreciate anything like that beach. Or maybe we grow accustomed to the idea that these delicate moments will always be there to experience; that our own constricted realities strapping us down to the consuming world can always be separated from us at another, less spontaneous point in time. 

And maybe there always will be another time. However, I know that even for that short fleeting moment, where I stood and stared out at the shimmering surface of the ocean into the horizon; I felt infinite, and that there was nothing that could ever change that.