There is a place in North Pembrokeshire that means the world to me.
A small secluded beach down a narrow lane.
The sort of lane that if you were not sure where you were going, it would convince you with every step that you should turn back.
As if the brambly hedgerows and the overhanging trees jostle you back from where you came.
However, if you keep going, further than you want, a place is revealed that will leave you without a vocabulary to describe how a soul can soar at the sight of something wonderful.
On this beach there is a small, unprepossessing rocky outcrop and within the outcrop it is possible for one person to nestle in a hollowed space so sheltered and secure that peacefulness wraps around you. A peacefulness only matched by a deep sense of belonging to this place in that moment.
Here you can only feel infinitely small and inconsequential.
It is a place to let go of everything noisy that does not matter, and to receive in return something so contemplative and still that it never leaves you even when the noise, inevitably, comes back.
I think about my rock a lot, and I have thought about it even more these last few weeks. It is my place to quell the noise. My place to be secure, to feel infinitely small.
My place to realise that without the noise to accompany them, my worries must be even smaller than me.
No problem is bigger than us, but maybe we need to quell the noise and feel small first to put worries in their place.
Take care
Paul xx