Moonstone
Sterling Silver, Eco Sterling Silver Ring
Made in a size of your choice

Being raised right in the middle of the country, hours from the sea, it’s easy to forget the awe-inspiring nature of the ocean. Occasionally I long for the sea, for the perspective it brings and the humility it engenders. I feel like being surrounded by the ocean provokes a similar response to staring out at the cosmos, it makes my sense of self and my worries feel small. The ocean holds the power to consume and destroy, and regularly does so, but also seems to provide us with tranquillity and calm, not to mention its crucial role in our survival.

It feels to me that most of the things that are giving in this way also contain an element of taking away. The cycle of life provides until it’s our turn to give back. In a natural environment we consume life until it’s our time to be consumed. Obviously these days we’re rarely consumed, but regardless our matter eventually returns to the earth and feeds life. Life and death are two sides of the same coin.

Alan Watts believed that human consciousness was much like the ocean. He thought that the individualised self is more like a wave, rising out of the collective abyss, making its journey across the sea and then crashing down and merging back into its original source. I like this idea, it feels true to me. I often have a strong sense that consciousness links us deeply to all life but sometimes struggle to accept the idea that our individual soul is carried through the ages in reincarnation, I feel more like we are universal consciousness experiencing the world through an individualised perspective for a while.

Nobody really knows though. Consciousness remains the great unknown for science, philosophy and religion. It seems to me the more we learn the less obvious the answer becomes, but I quite enjoy the mystery of it. In a similar way, the ocean remains unknown, with depths still unexplored by human hands and the promise of lost ruins and empires of old submerged beneath the ocean floor. Most of all, time watching the ocean prevents hubris, it reminds us that there are great unknowns and that no matter how powerful we become there are always forces at play that are stronger than those of human design.

‘You didn't come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here’ - Alan Watts