The ocean has always seemed to me like a contradiction the earth never bothered to resolve.
It can be deafening without ever seeming angry.
A wave breaks, and for a moment the entire coast is filled with its voice then it recedes, leaving behind a silence so complete it feels almost deliberate.
I have never understood how something can be so loud and still feel so quiet.
Perhaps it is because the sound is only the surface of it.
Beneath that restless blue is another world entirely currents crossing distances no human body could endure, cold descending through warmer water, pressure gathering with depth, entire landscapes concealed beneath the reach of daylight.
The surface gives us almost nothing.
A little wind.
A little light.
The occasional silver of a wave turning over itself.
And yet beneath that composure, the ocean is in perpetual motion.
Nothing rests there for long.
Water rises.
Water sinks.
Heat travels.
Salt travels.
Life moves through darkness. The planet itself seems to breathe through it.
And I find something almost unbearable about knowing this while standing at the shore.
My feet are in the shallows.
The water is cool around my ankles.
I can hear the waves arriving and withdrawing with an almost monotonous tenderness.
But beneath me
miles of water.
Pressure.
Distance.
A darkness that does not require the absence of light to exist.
Things I will never see moving through places I will never reach.
The knowledge makes the surface feel suddenly delicate.
Almost deceptive.
As though the ocean has agreed to show us only its skin. Perhaps that is what I love most about it. It never gives the impression that it has finished becoming itself.
Even in stillness, there is movement. Even in silence, there is sound. Even where the water appears empty, something is passing through it.
I can stand beside it for hours and understand almost nothing.
And strangely,
I don't find that disappointing.
There are things I would rather remain immense.
I would rather the ocean keep some part of itself beyond language, beyond measurement, beyond the small, obedient boundaries of human understanding.
Let it remain larger than what I can name.
Let it be peaceful without being gentle,
violent without being cruel,
endless without being empty.
Let it roar beside me
and keep its deepest silence beneath me.
I think I love it for that.
For the strange privilege of standing at the edge of something immeasurable
and being allowed to understand only this much:
what I hear is not all of it. What I see is barely the beginning.
Beautiful penned, amazing sofiaaa..