When I leave my blinds open to just the right spot in the window, my studio admits a single beam of day’s first light. And if positioned just so when the ray slips through the glass, it will illuminate my head, warm my face, and in its gentle way, seep under my eyelids and pry them open.

I imagine, lying awake in those early morning hours, that the light carrying this new day was sent here just for me. I know this wave of particles traveled from the core of our star, broke the surface after a thousand years, and in minutes, sped millions more miles to our rotating globe, where by some miraculous feat of timing, she crests over the falling horizon, and breaks splendidly upon me. And my beam from so far away, beckons me from bed just in time to see her morning masterpiece before day breaks and banishes her work.

And so, following her cue, I take my morning walk west. To the ocean. Still shaded by crumbling bluffs and expensive homes—the light persists through the cracks, gracefully relentless to find that ever-farther point in eternity, where in constant departure, she is always arriving.

So too is this place an end and beginning. For many, the house on the bluff is the culmination of success and riches. The privilege of standing on continent’s end, with all possibility laid out before you beyond a vast unknown horizon— as if it were yours for the taking every day as you make your coffee.

I walk to where the water meets earth. The energy of wave and tide originating from some great distance to rise and shatter on itself before surging up the sand to greet my toes. The ocean, as the light, pays little reverence to the journey taken. And despite tremendous energy expended and transferred to arrive at my person, it asks nothing of me as it passes through and around. It brags not of its travels or lessons learned. It bothers not to proclaim future conquests.

My light and ocean tell a precious story. They turn my attention away from the night’s dreams, from the pathways I’ve plotted to my future, and my anxiety of what will or will not come to pass. And while I can only wash in their blissful presence, they will go on to the next moment, while I cannot be sure to follow. And they remind me that when my eyes are no longer there to receive what was once mine, they will be there all the same. And I think that is perfect.