Text taken from the section Restart by Andrea Bariselli on DOVE from August 2024
I spent a good half hour watching the wavesAtlantic Ocean crashing into sharp rocks. It’s one of those activities that, for some strange reason, has a cathartic effect on our minds. You could spend hours without realizing it. At some point, I realized something banal and surprising: this sound – precisely this placid, repetitive sound of sea waves – has been repeating itself endlessly since the formation of the Earth. And it’s also present on every other celestial body that contains liquid water. Earth is certainly not the only one in the universe.
At that moment, I touched with my fingertips to understand the idea of infinityimmortal and eternal. I found myself sitting on the edge of time. Just think that we don't even know where water itself comes from. Yet it is here and it is the origin of life. It is billions of years old and also inhabits my body right now. We are somehow one whole, like in the physical image (which has always made me smile) of the “primordial soup”.
The mystery hidden between the layers of rock
When you look at the world with this awareness, everything suddenly seems different. Everything is wonderful and sacred, but not in a religious sense: it is about celebrating the mystery that it represents. I am at Zumaiain the Pays Basquein front of a very famous cliff called Flysch.
We can see with our own eyes how alive and constantly evolving our planet is. Over millions of years, the living beings that populated the oceans ended up on the seabed, compacting themselves and forming this conformation with infinite patience, layer after layer. Just like a book, each “page” contains the history of a few hundred years.
When the Iberian Peninsula (which was previously an island) collided with the rest of Europe, many of these layers suddenly came to the surface, creating spectacular roads that extend for about 13 km along the coast. In Zumaia, however, they offer us a completely unique reading of the history of the Earth. Geologists have studied the remains of the species present in each layer and it is interesting to note that there is a precise moment when most species stop settling. Accompanied by other components such as iridium, very rare on our planet, they reinforce the theory of the extinction of the dinosaurs caused by a meteorite. Stop, game over. End of life. But not of the Earth: it is still there.
READ ALSO: When rock meets sea: the most spectacular cliffs in the world
The antidote to the “distracted society”
Absorbed in my thoughts, I begin to observe a bee going from flower to flower near me. I watch it dance, apparently chaotically, serenely. It is also a living creature, like me. We live in the same era, with the same right to enjoy this planet. Who knows what it thinks. I wonder if it thinks. Its life, simple and beautiful, consists of enjoying the sun and feeding itself. There is an incredible microcosm even in a single square meter of land, if only we knew how to observe it carefully.
We are here society of the distracted: of life, of others, of emotions. Of time. Of nature and the extraordinary life that populates it. We will all end up in a tiny layer hidden in the folds of time, like all those who came before us. A bee lives less than 40 days, visits at least 1,000 flowers and produces less than a teaspoon of honey, but for her, it's her whole life. This thought moves me.
Because our problem is to no longer let ourselves be surprised by anything, anesthetized as we are by a society that bombards us every day with useless stimuli and absurdities. It is apathy towards the beauty which will lead us to extinction, assuming there is another one. Remember that we are ephemeral. While we think we are eternal, this is our real misfortune.
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We live in a paradise and it is always there waiting for us. We also travel to come back to marvel at its extraordinary strength and mystery. Let us be lucky to be there to observe it. And to be able to listen to the lapping of the waves, lulled by the sensation of gratitude.
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