I used to look at the stars and dream and hope and imagine, then one day, the stars went out in my mind and what I began to see was a million creatures in a sea bigger than all of reality taking the place of the stars. It was then that I followed them. I followed them into a sea filled with more than I ever imagined. Followed them into an abyss of life, complexity, and depth. I chased them far and wide across a horizon submerged in light by the sun, the moon and especially the stars.

I was lost there.

There’s light over this darkening sea. Glowing and leading me away from the long days and nights lost at sea. It calls me but I fear that if I go I will no longer hear the waves. I fear the siren song will be lost to car horns and bustling streets. I fear I would ground my ship so deeply no tide could take me away. The waves have rocked me to sleep for so many years standing still seems impossible. I have been drifting for my sails are tattered and the light seems far. But my open horizon is changing now. Something there, calls to me in the night, glowing brighter as the current draws me in.

What flag could I raise now? Do I surrender?

The stars have led me to you even when I thought I changed my charted course. The moonlight reflective across a mirrored ocean will never lose its appeal but I find myself sails cast against the wind returning from wince I came.

This pull I feel so strongly is pulling me in two. One towards the freedom and mystery of an open sea and one pulls me to you.

The lightning strikes with more force than any of us ever expect. The breeze picks up; thunder shakes the earth around us making us wonder if everything around us will fall.

But there’s a steadiness to the flashes, to the rain, to the rumbles of an open sky. Tonight they blend with fireworks together they illuminate the sky and they spread like fire glowing brightly for brief moments of intensity. And we watch them as if young again for the first time seeing light and fire explode in more colors and patterns than we ever imagined. These are the moments that I am safe aground, the moments I look at the sea without longing. I choose to run my ship in against a current trying to pull me out and with you, because of you, I anchored.