Heaven is not so much a place as it is a perpetual moment.

The air is somehow both cool and warm as I breathe the saline scent of ocean air into my lungs. There’s no one in sight when I scan the horizon, but I do not feel alone. In fact, I feel more accompanied than I ever have been. The sunrise is welcomed, casting slightly different shades of orange and gold than it did when it left the day before. I drift off into contemplation…

I’ve learned at a very young age that people can be an unreliable source of love. It’s not necessarily their fault, we are only human. Families move. People lose interest, find a new person, or new group to associate with. In the worst cases, some will even be subjected to their own mortality early on. It’s not complicated. Others are not always going to be there for you, whether they can help it or not.

I’ve also come to find that everyone has a different idea of loyalty, and that others won’t always try to see from different perspectives in the way I do. I’ve become accustomed to the fickleness of human beings, even learned to anticipate it.

However, it is true what they say: when one door closes, another one opens, and sometimes for a good reason.

I had a unique childhood, cast away on barrier islands on the south shore of Long Island. I was able to find love in the extraordinary, beyond flesh and bone, and I am thankful for it. I found love in the persistent undulation of the Atlantic. I found love not just in the heart of others, but in the heart of nature. I found solace in the relentless way waves crash and recede. I found it in the micro and macro cosmos of all things, both living and seemingly inert. I found it in the potential of a drop of salt water. I developed a deeper appreciation for the physical properties and processes that govern our world. I began to associate love with what was raw, and unseen, as I knew there was more than what my eyes informed me.

I’ve learned almost everything I need to carry on with life in the temple of nature, a perpetual moment of love.