The tide is rolling quick. The white foam of broken waves washes the stone barriers at the base of the hill. There’s no beach to be found.

At my back is a forest stretching into a jungle. Snaking vines wrap between dotted pines— the rest is covered in a blanket of towering shrubs.

A floral spice flavors the air— beating back the ever-present salt spray from below.

I keep reading a passage by Rene Magritte about the folly of cynicism and how we mistakenly believe life must be seen in a tragic light.

As if the greater the terror, the greater the objectivity. That somehow it grants us an understanding to the mystery of existence.

How terrified we must be if we believe to deny joy will spare us from pain.

Even more— that we might be spared from anything. That we might exist outside of the whole. Outside of the continual movement and change of the universe.

We are spared nothing.

And thus we must remember that we are not spared joy.

We are not spared love.

Misery is no more eternal than joy.

It is not within us to understand.

It is to keep asking.

Cynicism is tied to believing we might understand— and being afraid of what it is we think is.

Joy is to revert to a state where awe is achievable.

It is through subtraction that the shed ourselves from the suffering that comes from our artificially formed identities being under threat.

We are changing— to desperately cling to an idea about oneself that isn’t true. That isn’t relevant— it brings us into a state of suffering.

We lose the ability to stay in the present and in such— we lose access to joy.

Unfortunately there is no guidebook to this.

More of a reminder that you cannot cling to a singular note if we’re meant to be living a symphony.