Water has always been present in my life, though I don’t remember deciding that it mattered to me. It simply did. Long before I thought about writing, before I paid close attention to routines or the shape of my days, I found myself returning to water without needing to understand why. Even now, I rarely question it. If given the choice, I will walk beside the harbour rather than through the streets, sit where I can hear waves beneath me, or choose a table overlooking the water and remain there longer than I intended. Something in me settles when water is nearby.
Perhaps it is because water never asks anything of me. It doesn’t require conversation, explanation, or a version of myself prepared for the world. Some days I arrive with thoughts already gathered, and other days I bring nothing at all. Either way, the water remains as it is, moving in its own time, unconcerned with whether I make meaning from it or simply sit beside it. There is relief in that kind of presence, in being near something that continues without needing my attention and yet steadies me when I give it.
At Balmoral Beach, I sometimes sit and watch the sun rise while the world begins to gather itself. The sky changes almost without announcement. Walkers appear along the path, dogs pull gently toward the sand, coffee cups move from hand to hand, and paddleboards slip onto the water before the morning has fully opened. Beneath all of it, the waves continue with the same steady language they have always spoken, lifting and falling, arriving and withdrawing, never hurried and never still.
I have always liked that about water. It moves constantly without seeming restless. The tide comes in and goes out without urgency, and the waves repeat themselves without appearing burdened by repetition. Nothing about it feels forced. Nothing seems concerned with what comes next. When I sit near it long enough, my own thoughts begin to loosen their grip. Concerns that felt sharp indoors soften slightly in the open air, not because they disappear, but because they are no longer the only thing present.
Perhaps that is why I often stay longer than I planned. What begins as half an hour becomes two. Coffee cools beside me. A book remains open on my lap without being read. A sentence arrives and then slips away before I decide whether to write it down. None of this feels wasted. Not every visit needs to become meaningful, and most don’t. Water has never demanded significance from me. It allows ordinary moments to remain ordinary, and I have come to trust that more than I used to.
There have been times when life felt crowded with responsibility, decisions, expectations, and noise. Even then, I found myself seeking water. Not because it changed what waited elsewhere, but because it altered the scale of things inside me. Problems remained. Responsibilities remained. Nothing was solved by sitting beside the harbour or standing with my feet in the shallows, yet something in me returned to proportion. Standing near something older and larger than my own concerns has a way of quietening unnecessary urgency.
Over the years, I have stood beside water in different countries, different seasons, and different states of mind. Some days were bright and warm, others grey and windblown. Sometimes I was alone, and sometimes I shared the moment with others, but wherever I found water, something familiar seemed to meet me there. Not recognition exactly, and not escape. More a sense that I didn’t need to become anything else before arriving. I could come as I was, with thought or without it, and let the edge of water hold what I could not yet name.
Perhaps that ease began long before I noticed it. I was born on an island, where water belonged to ordinary life rather than spectacle, and maybe that is why I have never treated it as somewhere to disappear. I don’t go to water to leave life behind. I go there because life becomes easier to hear in its presence. The harbour paths I walk, the beaches I return to, the tables where I sit with coffee and a laptop, the quiet moments before the sun lifts itself over the horizon — they have become part of the landscape of my days, not destinations or rituals, but familiar companions.
When memories surface near water, I let them. When they don’t, I don’t search for them. Some mornings carry thought, and others contain nothing more than the sound of waves moving against the shore. I have stopped believing one kind of morning is more valuable than the other. Water permits silence without awkwardness, thought without conclusion, and stillness without explanation. It offers no answers, but it also makes no demands, and perhaps that is why I continue to return.
Even now, after all these years, I still find myself drawn to the edge of it, content to sit quietly while the waves continue their work. They arrive, withdraw, and arrive again, asking nothing from me except that I remain long enough to notice they are there.
