The Great Equalizer

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

Describe the ocean to a person who is blind.

Next to the birth of Kid 1, my biggest takeaway from living in South Carolina was falling in love with the ocean. I finally “got” the boating culture. I finally understood why Jimmy Buffett’s music feels the way it does.

But if I had to describe the ocean to someone who couldn’t see the horizon, I wouldn’t talk about the color blue. I’d talk about perspective.

The Sound of Forever

Listen to those waves crashing. That’s the tide. It is the world’s most consistent heartbeat. Continents have shifted, empires have fallen, and wars have been fought, yet the ocean remains. Through 500 years of industrialization, we’ve managed to make it a little dirtier, but we haven’t managed to ruin it. It is too vast for us to conquer. It was here a million years ago, and it will be here a million years after we’re gone.

When I went on my one and only transatlantic flight 35 years ago, I remember checking out the view every hour. Every time I opened the viewport: water. Endless, massive, stretching beyond the imagination. It’s a scale of existence that makes your “to-do” list feel very quiet.

The Feel of the Salt

People ask about the difference between the Great Lakes and the sea. Even though I grew up near the lakes, the ocean won my heart because of the air. You can feel the salt on your skin before you even touch the water. It’s heavy; it’s thick.

Getting into the surf isn’t like stepping into a bathtub. The water has a weight to it—a resistance. And when you leave the beach, unless you rinse off, that salt stays with you. It tightens on your skin as it dries. The best way I can describe it? It makes you feel a bit like a semi-melted Jolly Rancher candy. Sticky, cured by the sun, and wearing the sea like a second skin.

Communion and Clarity

For some, the idea of swimming with fish or the distant shadow of a shark is terrifying. For me, it’s a reminder that we are just another species sharing a home. It’s a “communion with nature” in the truest sense.

Every time I leave the beach, I feel a pang of sadness, but also a profound sense of relief. The ocean puts my everyday “crap” into perspective. In a hundred years, no one will remember the small stresses of my Tuesday morning—but the tide will still be rolling in and out, right where I left it.

On a sunny day, the ocean doesn’t just help me forget life; it reinvigorates me. It’s a mysterious, beautiful teacher that reminds us to respect the world we’re standing on. It’s always there.

Waiting.

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AI art created with Google Gemini

The article “The Great Equalizer” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.