On a Beach Walk: No. 45 (Windows)

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I like walking the beach. It’s good for the mind, body, and soul – and refreshing on my feet.

As I walk, I look at the buildings. Regardless of the size and location, all have windows – those panes of glass providing light, views, and protection to those inside.

The windows are different sizes and orientations. The vast majority are rectangular while the multi-sided and circular are few – yet, all these windows trigger my thoughts on this day. Yes, windows – those mere openings in a wall covered by glass.

My head turns away from the buildings and toward the water where I spot the horizon – that line where the water meets the sky as I wonder what lies beyond that metaphoric window.

On this day many clouds fill the sky while serving as a translucent window allowing light through while blocking what lies above. The occasional hole of blue serves as a reminder of other days while blue patches serve as a window beyond the clouds.

Even on the cloudless days, the blue sky serves as a window shade to what lies beyond for night is what allows us to raise the shade to examine and dream about what lies beyond.

The water’s surface serves as a window to the beauty and history to what lies below. However, one seldom sees that world until they pass through that window’s opening into the aquatic underworld.

I think of medical equipment as various scans and tests that allow medical professors to peer through the opaque window of our skin and bones into our internal world of normalcy and abnormality.

I think of microscopes allowing us to pass through a window into a world where our eyes cannot naturally go. I also think about telescopes taking us beyond our atmospheric window into a distant world that we try to imagine.

I think of other windows such as poems – a collection of a poet’s words causing us to reach deep into our soul for understanding of the poet’s world – a world that the poet allows us to discover by looking through the window of their words.

I think of books as windows – both fiction and nonfiction for they allow us to expand our world by travelling through the window of knowledge and creativity with reflection, learning, and fantasy.

I think of learning a process taking us through the window of a world that we do not know that works to close the window to ignorance while opening a seemingly infinite number of windows into a new world.

I think of windows are an interval of time – a span providing an opportunity – that golden hour – whether planned or by chance, that optimal moment for something to happen.

Windows – whether open or closed – real or metaphor – windows are worth pondering. Thinking about windows is a reason why walking the beach is good for the mind, body, and soul – and refreshing on my feet.