What does your special place look like?

I think of this as a secret place, if only because it exists in your imagination, and no where else. You are the only one who can see it. It is a place you would love to go any time you need to calm down. If you close your eyes, and you see that place, what does it look like?

Right now, my secret, special place is on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Maybe this cliff is in Ireland. Maybe it’s California. I go there, and there is a bench just in the right place—the highest point on the cliff. Despite the height of the cliff, the bench still feels the sting of salt water, especially during big storms. A person sitting there, would feel the same thing.

On good days, the sky extends forever (or to the horizon, whichever comes first), and the pattern of the waves on the surface of the ocean is endlessly fascinating. Sometimes there are otters and/or other sea mammals playing close to the shore.

Sometimes it is a comfort to have a place I could jump from, flying to the end of my life. I would never do that, but I like having the danger of that thought in mind when I stand on the edge. It makes me careful not to go too far; not to cause a landslide where the cliff slips down into the ocean.

My favorite days are the stormy ones. It makes me feel… I don’t know how to describe it—heroic?—to stand in the face of the stinging rain, watching the huge waves batter the base of my cliff. There is something cathartic about that.

No matter what it is like there, I come away from the cliff renewed in some way. It lifts the fog and darkness from my brain. It allows me to come back to the true bliss of reality. And it’s all there, inside my head, any time I want. Although the real thing is so much better.