Standing knee-deep in the freezing, gray-blue water of the ocean, I love to look out into the horizon, as far as the eye can see, and admire that, quite frankly, my eye can’t see very far. For hundreds of thousands of miles beyond the faint horizon line, this vast body of water stretches on and on, connecting countries, continents, civilizations. The icy mass swirling around my bare legs has kissed the shores of worlds beyond my reach. How many rains have dappled these waves? How many hands have lapped these ripples?

Waves pound against the sand in a thunderous melody. One line of footprints, erased from existence. Three sun-bleached stones, swallowed from the land. Ten broken shells, swept into nothing. I rock with the waves, one with their rhythm as they push against my shins and pull against my calves. If the waves crested close enough, they could gargle me up and erase me from existence, too.

I am at the ocean’s will. I am nothing against its merciless strength, its surging persistence, and its waves of salt and steel. It moves as one living enigma, pushing as it wishes, playing with my own resistance. It laughs at me as I stumble and slosh through the biting waters along the shoreline. It tastes my skin and stings my nose with a tangy mist. The force of its power is appealing and mystifying.

In one fluent movement, I am pulled under the waves. Weightless, I thrash against a vast fluidity, locked in a world without oxygen, one that won’t let me go. My hands meet only the creamy silence of water, and for a fleeting moment, I am content with being helpless under this shield of liquid light.

Then my head surfaces, and I am gasping, panting, coughing. Saltwater stings my eyes and burns my gaping mouth. A current of wind takes my hair in its cruel fingers and sends it flying over my shoulder. I am ice, and my legs are without feeling. Spitting and cursing, I drag myself through the unforgiving numbness and onto a bed of sand and seaweed. My denim shorts are itchy, and my shirt sticks to me like plaster. I shiver and wrap my dribbling arms around goose-fleshed legs.

Winking, the ocean laughs at my discomfort and sends a spray of salt into my just-recovering eyes. It plays with me, amused by my meager existence. No matter how I fight the steady strength that it enforces, I will never win. I am so small against its ancient enormity that I make about as much difference to it as a grain of sand. Constantly moving, never ceasing to hide its truths.

Perhaps the reason that I keep coming to the ocean is because it is humbling. Its incessant ability to debase me reminds me that I will never have any effect on this body of water and light. The ocean was here when I was born and will remain here, long after I die, taunting other little humans such as I.

We are all equal when the waves touch our feet. For in one movement the ocean can pull us under, and we will be nothing but a piece of the horizon.