The Weight of Salt and Saltier Air

Dear reader, I have been thinking about the way we hold onto our own ghosts. We spend our early years trying to outrun the shore, convinced that the horizon is a finish line rather than a beginning. There is a specific, frantic energy to being young—a belief that if we pull hard enough on the ropes, we can drag the world into the shape we want it to take. We don’t realize yet that the weight we are hauling is not the vessel, but the gravity of our own expectations. We are always pushing, always straining against the tide, unaware that the beauty is not in the arrival, but in the messy, tangled effort of the collective pull. Do you remember when you were small enough to believe that a piece of wood and a bit of twine could carry you across the entire ocean? What happens to that version of you when the water finally turns cold?

Karthick Saravanan has captured this feeling perfectly in his image titled Reckless Youth. It reminds me that we are all still pulling at those same ropes, trying to navigate our own small seas. Does looking at this make you want to go back, or are you finally content to stay on the sand?