The Lagoon

You will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life.

—Philippians 2:15–16

That night in Fiji the conversation felt as fresh as the wind blowing in off the lagoon. Travel is important because it takes us far enough away from our everyday lives to see those lives with new clarity. When you’re on the other side of the world, when you’re under the silent sea, watching a bright, silent world of fish and coral, when you’re staring up at a sky so bright and dense with stars it makes you gasp, you begin to see the fullness of your life, the possibility that prevails.

You don’t have to go to the other side of the world, but you do have to get out of those same four walls you’re always staring at. Drive to the city, or to the country, or to a lake whose shores are totally unfamiliar to you. Listen for new rhythms and sounds, and watch your life refract and shift against a new backdrop. You’ll see things you didn’t know were there, and recognize selves long hidden. Sometimes a new sense of possibility is found practically in your own backyard, viewed for the first time from a new vantage point.