She went to yoga classes and even thought of a silent meditation, but the idea of silence just made her laugh. Sometimes she went to the beach to stare at the wresting and tumbling waves, hoping to contemplate nothing. But then she would be distracted by people watching. Sometimes she hiked through thick moss-covered trees and her exhales mingled with the forest air.

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Anna thought about how beautiful her surroundings were…

she thought about her heart racing through inclines and past ledges…

she thought about making a list of what she had to do when she got home.

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     Anna was always reading or watching shows or working. Did staring off into imagined alternative realities, or dreams, count as nothing? Tomorrow, she thought, I'll get better at this. But every tomorrow felt like a failure.

 

     Until one day she stood in wrinkled toe-textured sand with water up to her knees, the cold shutting out everything else. She realized there was peace and meditation and nothingness in everything: breathing, silence, laughter, work, imagination, dreams, everything. And maybe the nothingness didn't need to be complete before it was real