The Island

Written from a beach in Da'lian, overlooking the blue bay and islands dotting the horizon.

If it’s far enough away, we can’t tell what it holds. Therefore we swim hard, and we swim harder, because we don’t know what’s there. It’s the promise of something new, of something undiscovered. It’s the possibility of something better, but we can’t see it, so we can’t be disillusioned, we can’t be disappointed, we can’t be disrupted from our dream. If we can’t see it, we can’t identify it, therefore we can’t run from it, instead we run towards it, so as to discover what it truly is.  So we swim. We swim to that island off in the distance. To the one where we can only see the outline. Not the ones that are closer, the ones that are populated with mansions and overused tourist traps, but the one that looks rocky. The one that looks undefined. Indescribable because you cannot see what it holds.  Whereas that which is close is not a mystery, there’s nothing to be discovered…at least we think so.  Although it may have hidden treasures that no one will ever know of because they don’t want to go somewhere that’s known.

But the one far away, the one you can hardly see, that’s the one where we strive so hard to be, to reach, so we can discover and claim it as our own.

I’m not sure why, but that’s the draw, the attraction, the mystery of the unknown.