The Surface of Things

I remember sitting by a canal in Amsterdam, watching the rain disturb the oily sheen of the water. An old man sat next to me, eating a sandwich wrapped in brown paper. He pointed at the ripples and said, ‘The world is mostly just a mirror that refuses to stay still.’ He was right. We spend so much of our lives looking for depth, for the bottom of things, for the solid ground beneath our feet. But there is a strange, quiet truth in the surface. It is where the light decides to land, where the sky meets the earth, and where the chaos of the atmosphere turns into something rhythmic and patterned. We are often so desperate to see what lies underneath that we miss the way the light dances on the skin of the world. Sometimes, the most honest view is the one that stays right on top, watching the colors shift and settle in the wake of a passing moment. Is it possible that we have been looking too deep all along?

Siew Bee Lim has captured this exact feeling in the beautiful image titled On the Water Surface. It reminds me that even the most ordinary puddle can hold a universe if you stop long enough to watch the light. Does this view change how you look at the ground beneath your feet today?