I am not alone as I chase this dream I see alone. The cosmos and I breathe in resonance.
I sat atop One Tree Hill on a December Friday night, the full moon a critical sentinel, and the city sprawled beneath me like a living labyrinth, each light a gasp, each shadow a sigh. The journey here had already begun to transform me. The gates were locked, so I parked my car five minutes down the road outside a dairy, a small shrine to convenience and the ordinary world I was leaving behind. I walked twenty minutes through paddocks, the grass brushing my legs like a thousand soft reminders that life waits patiently for those willing to move through it. Halfway through, I paused at a trough, the water catching the first reflection of the moon, small and tentative, like a promise of what was to come.
With every step, the moon swelled, growing brighter, larger, louder, almost alive. It became a guide, a witness, a mirror of my own rising consciousness. By the time I reached the summit, the boundary between moon and earth had vanished, and I felt us bleed into one another, a convergence of consciousness and cosmos.
From this height, the world seemed both insignificant and eternal. The Sky Tower jutted from the urban landscape like a toothpick piercing the dark, while cars crawled and darted along arteries of asphalt like swarms of abstract ants, each movement both chaotic and deliberate. Through the eyes of the clouds, I could see it all at once, every ambition, every desire, every frantic human striving below me, and it felt like witnessing the world from the perspective of a soft god.
And then, brutal in its clarity, came the realization. Looking at the pinnacle of what society calls success, the skyscrapers, the bars, the intoxicated revelers chasing fleeting satisfaction, I understood that path was not mine. While others dissolved themselves in drink and forgetfulness, I sat in hills thinking, awake in a way that could hurt. Through this awakening, I discovered a truth I had always sensed but never fully embraced. To love consciously, to give and hold with care, to stretch your heart without surrendering yourself is a form of success far richer than wealth, power, or applause.
The night reminded me of my own strange, stubborn beauty. I get paid to wander bars, event spaces, and gatherings with my camera in hand, capturing fragments of someone’s “big special Saturday,” their joy and chaos a testament to life’s fleeting wonder. I guide others in art studios, helping them dig through the layers of their imagination, helping them meet themselves in ways they never expected. Not long ago, I stood behind counters greased with consumerism, serving meals with mechanical indifference. Now I inhabit spaces of creation, witnessing life unfold in aunthenic, messy, vibrant color. The contrast struck me sharply. I am a grain of sand in a cosmos, celestial and indifferent, yet even a grain can reflect something eternal if it stretches, if it opens itself to the currents of the universe. To move beyond my smallness, I must love more fiercely, more expansively, and radiate consciousness as far and wide as I can.|
From One Tree Hill, I watched life in full noise and color, and I felt removed from the patterns others seemed to follow blindly. This detachment confirmed something essential. I am walking my own path, hesitant but deliberate. And yet the clarity came with its companion, existential anxiety. The future is an opaque blur, a landscape I can only glimpse through a narrow window. I am becoming a self I have never dared imagine, a version forged from uncertainty, courage, and longing. And I am terrified, terrified of failure, of loss, of not being enough. Yet even in that terror, even as it coiled around me like a living thing, I glimpsed something holy. The lights still shine. The city below, the moon above, the glimmer of stars, they insist that brilliance persists even in the presence of fear.
So I resolved, silently, with a divine tenderness, to pursue my dreams anyway. To convert the raw, trembling matter of my doubt and dread into something that could reach others and the universe in equal measure. I am frightened, yes, but I am capable of navigating this new, uncharted space of myself. I am capable of loving fully without dissolving, of creating beauty without expectation, of being both a grain and a conduit of universal energy. Sitting there, moonlight kissing my shoulders, wind brushing against my skin, I understood that existence is both terrifying and exquisite at once.
Life does not pause for courage; it demands it. And so I will continue, step by fucking shit-scarred step, expanding the fragile universe of my consciousness with every act of care, every moment of attention, every choice to be awake when the world numbs itself. I am a grain of sand, yes, but I am also motion, awareness, energy. And tonight, atop One Tree Hill, I felt it. The unrelenting, raw, unassailable beauty of being alive in a world that is both indifferent and breathtaking.
When I began my descent, the air felt lighter, as if the hill had peeled a layer from outgrown selves. At the trough, I dipped my hands into the cold water and felt it cleanse more than skin. As I continued downward, a gust of wind pushed through the paddocks with such force I almost felt it lift me from the ground and carry me into the night. And just as I reached the gate again, someone was running through it, alone, dressed for their own pilgrimage in active-wear at 2am. For a moment our eyes met. That simple encounter gave me a small but necessary hope. Maybe I am not the only one trying to live between realms, trying to understand existence while still moving through the weight of this earthly world.
I am not alone as I chase this dream I see alone. The cosmos and I breathe in resonance.