I live by the ocean, and for most of my life I never considered myself an ocean person. I was always the hiker, the mountain-lake, the pine-tree-type person, enjoying the fresh air of higher altitudes, but now I’m beginning to reconsider such a position.

This morning I woke up to a very clear and beautiful sky. I woke up at the crack of dawn, that moment when the sun hasn’t quite reached the lip of the world and outer space is dark blue except for that peel of an early eastern sky. I gazed into the eastern orange and could see the Saddleback Mountains cradling Orange County.

I looked out into the ocean to notice the expansive change in color as the night began to slip away. A deep sense of peace came over me then, like a sigh caught in a moment when you have nothing to worry over, a flash of something quiet in a normally busy life. It was a brief moment, maybe even a nanosecond, but in that time I also found my love for the ocean.

There’s something about the ocean that makes you feel small. If you’ve ever been on a boat somewhere out at sea you probably have felt this. But even if you are just staring out from the sand it can make you feel the same way. I suppose this was where my moment of pause came from, gazing into that expansive sea.

I enjoy the ocean probably for the same reason that I enjoy the mountains. And I suppose if I were to delve deeper into my feelings I would discover it’s not the environment that I enjoy but simply the feeling that I get when nature taps me on the shoulder and asks me to take notice.

I bring this up because I wanted to share something about reflection. Even though I discovered something new about myself, I appreciated that small nanosecond for the simple gift of reflection. It was a pause, a take-note moment that is rare in my life. Maybe I haven’t given them much thought, but I will from now on. Just like reading, maybe I need to make the time to pause now and again, to know that I am small but part of something larger.

Copyright © Tyler Gant 2009
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