As a kid, I remember going to the beach. I remember walking the shore, wearing my little swimsuit. I remember the glorious and inimitable joy of having sand in my crack.

My biggest objective, of course, was finding seashells. All children care deeply about shells. This is the main reason you visit the beach as a kid. It’s about looking for shells.

What are you going to do with the shells? Nobody really cares. You haven’t worked that part out yet. All that matters is looking for them.

You do this if for no other reason than because, hey, we’re at the beach, y’all! Isn’t this great?! Wow, check out these shells! Whoa, look at that one! It’s orange! I call dibs!

It didn’t matter if the sky was overcast and foreboding. It didn’t matter if the water was muddy, or if the shore was littered with clumps of dead seaweed that smelled like a Port-a-John.

You’d find your little shell, pluck it from the sand, then dust it off like you’d just found a thousand bucks.

I, personally, had no organizational system for collecting shells. No buckets, containers, or nets. Thus I was forced to carry my collection in my hands.

Which wasn’t a big deal until you had collected WAY more shells than you could carry. Soon, I would be walking along the shoreline with an entire armful of shells. Big shells, little shells, and all shells in between.

Then, at some point, toward the end of the day, reality would hit. You’d look at the beach and realize there were gazillions and gazillions of shells beneath your feet. There was no way you could ever collect them all. Furthermore, what the heck were you going to DO with these shells?

So, I would let them go. I would scatter the mass of shells to the wind, flinging them into the air, watching them disperse like rain. The shells would plop into the water.

And well, they’re still out there, I guess. Just waiting to be discovered by totally different children, with totally different sand in their cracks.

Sometimes I think our world is like an overcast beach. Our sky is iron gray, and unforgiving. Our water is muddy with hatred, violence, and random acts of politics. But the shore. Oh, that blissful shore.

There are beautiful things embedded within the sand beneath our toes. So many magnificent shells. In some ways, you could say these shells ARE the beach itself. For without shells, there would be no sand. And without sand there would be no shore. And without shore, what would hold back the ocean?

Each shell is like an act of love. These loving acts are everywhere, forming a beach beneath your feet. These tiny acts of love are so numerous, they hold back the fury of the Atlantic.

These beautiful things are always lying at your feet. But most people are too grown-up to notice them. They’re too busy looking at the sky, predicting rain. Or staring at an angry ocean, wondering how many sailors it will kill.

But what if our job in life is to be as children gathering shells? Running along the beach, hunting for beautiful things? What if that’s why we’re here?

Find as many beautiful things as you can. Hold them in your arms. Cherish them. Once you discover that your arms contain too many precious gifts to hold, it’s time to fling all that love back into the world.

And start all over again.