We easily remember transgressions, one-liners, and bad jokes but try to remember the crashing waves at dawn, a sunset of purple-orange gold, or the sound of a bird chirping as it glides over a river. Try to see in your mind’s eye the pelican’s wing flirting with the ocean, the smile of a best friend no longer part of the world, or the voice of someone who told you they loved you many years ago.

It is only through words that any of these things live on and are able to be recalled and then shared with others.

Writing is the exercise that all who claim to be human and have meaningful experiences should be practicing, else these precious moments are as easily lost as the last wave that crashed ashore and is now gone forever.

Carving names and dedications on trees and benches, drawing them on rocks and walls, attaching locks to cables, bridges, and branches, we try to leave something that offers a kind of permanence that we or someone we’ve loved has been here.

Leaving a symbol so that we might return someday and find it still there is full of hope that someone should stay in our hearts and memories well into the future. Maybe more of our lives should be spent practicing writing our stories in order to give a larger space to the meaning of the moments that inspire us to not forget those we’ve loved and the special places we’ve shared with them.

To that end, I must share how I smile at Caroline standing at the cliff’s edge, looking over at me and the small amount of fog between us. She smiles at me and then returns to watching the sea. When pelicans pass by I know she’s taking mental note if they are flying in a V formation overhead or as a string following one another over the waves. My wife is certainly aware that as the morning sky brightens with hints of pink, blue, and a pale gray due to the late summer fog that’s rolling in, the sun crawling over the horizon will be making dramatic changes to the entire scene. To her left, waves have started to capture the first rays of direct sunlight; we are seconds away from seeing the sun for ourselves.

In the transition zone between night and day, there are a few others out here: some dog walkers, another photographer, and the surfers who were here before all of us. The waves grow larger in the advancing day, the fog thickens, and we must get going as nobody gets to linger forever.

Just one more moment, one more walk to take a seat before the seas and gaze at all that must remain unknown. At night, we’ll do the same as we ponder the void and countless stars that will never warm our brief existence. Though we may never visit the bottom of the sea or a distant planet, storytellers have the ability to bring us places that remain out of reach for most people. When we write our own story, we have a reference point to revisit later in life. The adventures of our younger lives become the narrative of that long-forgotten self whose journey was possibly vastly different than that of the person approaching their sunset years.

There may come a day we find ourselves sitting at a favorite place by the shore, missing the other who had shared our smiles, joy, and gaze of amazement as we dream of what adventures might still lay ahead. Look out there, out into the distance, and then try to pull it all within you. None of it will stay long as the next horizon beckons, but you should leave yourself and others these breadcrumbs of memories upon the page; one distant day, they might just bring delight to someone looking to remember their time at the seaside when they were lost in love and wonder.

We must turn to writing in the same way we each care for our own physical health: by exercising. Just as the bird flies as a large part of its nature, humanity uses words for all that we do, and yet we most often simply satisfy ourselves with how we verbally express ourselves, even to the point of being oblivious of our own poverty of vocabulary. At my age, approaching a stage of late-life maturity, I still see the fledgling wordsmith trying to master the flight of narrative that might one day glide effortlessly as birds do over the ocean. The truth is that strength is an evolving asset that must be cultivated on a regular basis, or the skill will atrophy.

I’ve learned over time that the same might be said about our ability to see and that far too many people are blind while their eyes are still perfectly functional; only their minds have taken their sight away. Truth and beauty may be subjective, but the desire to paint the world as unworthy or digging deep to find truth too demanding is the domain of the human returning to the animal or, worse, a kind of death. To be present, we must be alive and vibrant, riding in on waves and gliding into our potential but can the majority of us bring this idea or reflections to the page? Pride in driving a car, owning a home, and winning a game, are surrogates of distraction to knowing one’s self. When you write, you codify your thoughts and risk exposing that you possess a great inability to articulate thoughts deeper than the thickness of skin, able to tolerate the ridicule of yet being stupid. Writing makes you vulnerable; hence, the majority avoids it.

But one day, you will be gone. Who might remain that could have enjoyed exploring the depths of the person they want to keep on remembering? What about children, great-grandchildren, or future relatives a couple of hundred years from now interested in looking into the history of their lineage? Who among us wouldn’t treasure the diary of a distant family member writing of their time, surviving in a world so vastly different than the one in which we find ourselves? Our age makes this capturing of fragments so simple, allowing me to sit here in front of the page exploring the brief experiences Caroline and I have so we may never need to sit alone after one of us takes permanent leave.