Staying grounded

I do not consider myself a great scholar or academic. Some of the people who know me have said that I am intelligent, others have described me as creative, still others have said that I have potential. There may very well be some truth to that but the reality is that when I sit and ponder the immense patrimony of humanity built up by successive generations over millennia of existence, I am confronted by my own limitations.

Gazing up at the unclouded night sky, I glimpse a fragment of an infinite universe that brings me face to face with the boundaries of my own finite knowledge, and I feel little.

The sea also has that effect on me, except that, being more familiar with that environment (I mean I haven’t been doing much space exploration lately) there’s also a peaceful feeling mingled with the realisation of how tiny I am in the grand scheme of things. That connection must be the result of being an island child. Yet that sensation of being at home on the seashore is mingled with a quiet terror of the deep and the creatures that inhabit its hidden halls and submerged caverns. A terror that is confirmed by the awesome power unleashed at the coming of a storm. That force that otherwise lies dormant- a majestic might that you all but forget on days of sunny calm.

All these put life back in perspective and help me remember my place when I’m tempted to think more of myself than I should, or when I forget that the world does not revolve around me.

These are also the things that I miss living in a city which, while being a fairly green one, is still a city of asphalt and concrete and old stone. A city located in a region where the sunshine falls in buckets of cold liquid (which make seeing the blue sky a rare event). A landlocked city traversed by a river- which I’m happy for, but then a river has nothing on the sea!

Nevertheless I am grateful for a chance to experience something new. To see life from a different perspective. To learn to deal with fresh challenges and thereby grow. I think. I feel I breathe. I am alive. And I am grateful.