I’ve always thought that looking out into the ocean is the most realistic alternative to staring out into space. The vast expanses of nothingness that makes space must be incredibly peaceful to observe. Limitless and deathly quiet I would imagine. I’ve often dreamed of what that moment would be like, even though I know I will never experience it. Being in the middle of space and watching the universe unfolding. I know I would feel small, yet also quite comforted, that even in something so big, I have a small part to play in it.
And as I suggested, I get a similar feeling when I’m by the ocean. Many times I have just sat, and looked out into the distance, till my eyes can’t go any further. They effectively stop looking past a point, and draw a line telling me I have seen enough ocean for now. If I lift my head up however, and see the sky, I don’t get that line that I get with the ocean. It just seems to go on and on. That’s why I say the ocean is the ‘most’ realistic alternative. It’s not quite perfect. But it’s close enough.
I often think that having these moments, where you try to find the importance of such a small item in a very large universe as quite a surreal experience. Does what I do with my (hopefully) seventy to eighty years make any difference to this vastness we have. If a species hundreds of billions of miles away looked in our direction when I was in existence, then when I wasn’t, would there be any difference. I doubt it. I will never know. I assure you of this fact. And as I sit on the rocks, I decide that it doesn’t matter to me. What does matter to me is the slice of everything I am in. Imagine a supermarket that’s so big, you can’t quite see the back walls from the entrance. That’s everything. What this story is going to concern is a biscuit crumb in a shopping basket down one of the many aisles of that supermarket. It’s therefore unlikely to cause the supermarket to cease from existence. It’s unlikely to affect anything even within the shopping basket we’re in. But to me, sitting on the rocks, it’s as huge as it can get.
It’s the story of me. My name is Donald James, and this is how I could have changed everything. But it probably didn’t.
We begin at a point that isn’t the beginning of my story. It’s that point I have mentioned a few times already. I was sitting on a rock, on a beach. Where it was doesn’t matter, but it was a very cold day. I shivered as I watched the latest wave hit the rocks in front of me. The tide was coming in, so I’m assuming it was the early evening, and I had just come to the conclusion that it was time t move from this rock back to my home. I stood up and walked away from the water. As I reached the end of the sand I turned back, for a last glance at where I had been. And this is when I saw Richard. He was lying face down in the water, about 30 metres off shore. At first I wasn’t sure what Richard was. I assumed some rubbish thrown off a nearby pier. As I stared and my eyes focused on the item out in the ocean, I saw it was a man. I ran back and jumped in. It was icy cold, and all my joints stopped as soon as they connected with the water. I never thought I would ever experience what freezing would feel like. But I did then. It hurts, a lot. My eyes blurred over, and in unbearable agony, I blacked out......
Written by Adam Harris
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