I'm writing this as I sit on a motel balcony overlooking the Atlantic Ocean while taking the first Memorial Day Weekend vacation of my life. It's the early evening and the boardwalk is alive with people of every background. I feel relaxed, and a bit chilly, as anyone should on the nighttime beach. There's something about the shore that, as a fiery personality, really extinguishes my flames. My flames of worry, rush, talkativeness; the parts make up an equation that make me feel renewed. I've contemplated the beach whilst I sit watching people walk by and the ocean ebb and flow. I've realized that there's a specific formula of how the beach helps relax.
The first chunk of the equation: the ocean. Mysterious, ominous, hypnotic. It puts things in perspective: you're a grain of sand in the world and there's so much to see and do because the world is so big. There's so much opportunity. When I look out on the ocean, I think of the distance between us and Europe and how much there is to see and discover between us. On the same token, the ocean can be intimidating in that way. There is a lot we don't know about the ocean, a lot of uncertainty. But it is comforting to recognize that something as vast and beautiful as the ocean also doesn't seem to have itself sorted out yet. Something so revered gets away with not being completely discovered and it's millions of years old. In the ocean's timeline, I'm maybe a couple hundred years old, so I can get away with not knowing myself yet.
Another thing that is important to me about the sea is the fact that you use every sense: the smell of salt, the sight of rippling waters, the sound of crashing waves, the taste of a wave that knocks you down out of nowhere, the feel of mild temperatures. Rarely does one thing allow us to use all of our senses safely to take it all in.
The second additive? The boardwalk. The constant reminder of life. There are so many people in this world; so many stories, lives, and places within us. Families laughing, bikes whizzing by, screams of excitement from rides, drunken yells of anger from the nearby bar, cries from a child over a lost balloon. You can find it all on the boardwalk. It makes you feel not so alone. Even on a slow night, the beach towns are just dynamic. They say NYC is the city that never sleeps, but have you ever been at the shore during the summer? People are always out and about and just living.
As I'm turning in for the night, the promise of energy buzzes in the atmosphere. I'm still relaxed, still a bit chilly, but I have a smile on my face because the ocean, the shore, the boardwalk all just have an important therapeutic piece of me. There's nothing like the soul of the beach.
