Letter Twenty Six: One Last Horizon

I didn’t begin this journey searching for transformation. At first, I just needed motion. Something to push against, to shake the dust from the corners of my life, to feel the wind and let it remind me that I was still here. I wasn’t chasing answers. I wasn’t running from anything. I simply needed to move far enough away from the noise to hear myself again.

It’s funny how we always imagine clarity will come as a lightning strike, a sudden knowing; but in truth, it comes like fog lifting. Gradually. Gently. One horizon at a time. Somewhere in the middle of it all; between the long bus rides, salt stung mornings, earl grey tea cooled too quickly on quiet decks, I realized I had stopped measuring growth by where I was going, and started noticing who I was when I arrived.

I have walked the long arc of the earth,

sailed past the skin of what I once was,

chased dawns that didn’t wait for me,

and forgave nights that did.

The compass never pointed home

it pointed inward.

Every horizon I chased,

I found folded inside my own ribs.

Growth did not come softly.

It came through ache.

Through the echo of mistakes I made twice,

through the silence after I blamed the world

for storms I stirred in my own chest.

But I learned: you see, I am both the wave and the wake.

The fire and the flint.

The question, and the one who must answer it.

No one else gets to chart my course.

Not anymore.

I no longer fear the storms

I study them,

I breathe with them,

I let them teach me who I am becoming.

To you who have followed these letters: thank you.

Thank you for holding spacefor the messy, restless, salt stung becoming

of a boy turning toward himself.

But now, it is your turn.

Ask yourself the hard questions.

Be soft where it matters.

Be fierce where it counts.

Dismantle the parts of you built to please

and rebuild with intention,

not apology.

Be willing to grow beyond who you were told to be.

Let your heart be both compass and question.

And when the next horizon calls, go.

But don’t just chase it.

Ask it to chase you back.

With salt in my lungs and light behind me,

I go on.

This marks the close of my first full scale season of blogging: Letters from the Horizon. Not the end, just the end of this season. As we pass the official half way marker of 2025, another chapter is taking shape, and when it’s ready, you’ll be the first to know. Thanks for following on, your unwavering dedication to this means more than words will ever be able to amount.

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