I tend to be drawn to the water.  It has been this way for all my life.  I grew up on Lake Michigan, and many nights I would venture out and walk down the pier alone to go sit by the water.  At MSU I have repeatedly found little places by the Red Cedar to sit and write.  I go for walks by the pond next to my condo.  Even in Turkey I spent most nights down on the rocks by the river.

I think that this has to do with the nature of water.  It is simple, it is something we see and use daily, and yet it still holds some majesty.  Whenever I am by the water I think it is somehow significant, somehow bigger.  I am like this with every aspect of nature, and as I probe deeper, every aspect of life.  I think it is a tendency we have as humans, to look for significance in the little things.

We live in a world of metaphor and analogy.  We compare and boil things down because in their rawest form, we do not comprehend things. 

I search out these places to put pen to paper, assuming that somewhere out there is enlightenment, that somewhere in nature is the secret to inspiration and happiness that I have lost in this concrete world. 

But maybe we are just grasping at straw.  Maybe the waves on the shore are not telling up about renewal and second chances as they wash the prints from the store.  Maybe there is absolutely no significance to life in the way a certain leaf flutters and flies in the wind.  Maybe the stars are just far off points of light.  Maybe things aren’t as big as we make them.  Maybe it all is just chemicals and reactions.

But there is something that points to the divine.  That when we look at even the seemingly simplest things, we can see such beauty and meaning.  We can see past what is there to see what may be.  This is not nothing.  This is significant.  This is the essence of man.

We do not see bark and leaves and dirt and a mixture of chemicals and bonds.  We see life, breath, hope.  In waves we see redemption, in rain we wash away the weight of life. The light of a star may come from so far that the star itself has died by now, but when has the light of something that no longer exists ever brought such joy and beauty to life?

We are not constrained by the actual.  We are privy to a great secret that too many people miss.  That everything is beautiful.  Nothing is merely what it appears to be.  There is more to the world than what we see.  To see this is what makes men move. 

Scientists look at the mundane and see through it to the beautiful intricacies that lie beneath.  Astronomers look out to see how massive the universe we live in is, and see beauty even in the emptiness of space.  Artists take a blank page and imprint a piece of their soul onto it, capturing the beauty they see. 

Without this freedom to look beyond the obvious, to see the beauty that lies just beneath the surface, this freedom is what makes man unique.  And this beauty is what lets men persevere.