I have always loved the sea and staying close to it. It must come from childhood, from growing up waking up to it, where it was simply part of life rather than something I had to seek out. When we moved to the city, that closeness became a distant memory. And yet recently, I have found myself drawn back to it, to places where I can walk along the seaside and feel the salt settle on my face and in my hair, leaving it slightly sticky. It’s funny how something like that, which might once have felt like an inconvenience, now feels calming. There is an acceptance in it. The air is humid, the salt is present, and nothing about it asks to be changed. It simply is. The water doesn’t adjust to you. You adjust to it. And in that, something softens. What the sea gives is not just a view or a feeling. It gives a return. A quiet pull back into something more natural, something that doesn’t need to be explained to be understood. I felt that again today while swimming lengths in the pool. At first, the water is always cold. There is that moment of resistance, where your body reacts and wants to pull away. But once you move, once you stay with it, something shifts. The cold disappears and what takes its place is the force of the water itself. It meets every movement. It doesn’t let anything pass unnoticed. Every part of the body comes alive. Muscles you don’t usually feel begin to work. Your breathing finds its rhythm. Your body responds. And when you go under, even for a moment, everything quiets in a way that feels complete. Water demands your presence. Not in a forceful way, but in a way that leaves no space for distraction. You can’t be elsewhere when you’re in it. Your body has to engage. Your breath follows. And because of that, your mind settles without being asked. You don’t try to be present. You are. That is its power. We often think of calm as something we have to create. Something we reach by sitting still, by controlling the mind, by trying to arrive somewhere within ourselves. But water doesn’t work like that. It brings you there. Through resistance. Through movement. Through rhythm. It strips everything back until only what is real remains - your breath, your body, the moment you are in. And without realising it, you return to yourself.
