After I’d endured the painful ramble of baseball and prom long enough, I gave my best shot at a lame excuse and ended the pointless text conversation. I looked about the room for a place to escape the mindless banter of materialism and the overwhelming presence of consumerism. They screamed their name at me through the radio and upon the TV that someone had turned on in a moment of irrational boredom. An announcer's voice emanated from some corner of the room, giving instruction on how to change my clothes and what Apple product I needed in order to fit in this coming summer.

I soon sought the back door after one of my siblings tried to convince the family to watch some movie about a mouse and his friend yet again. As I started to leave the all too familiar rant of college and careers that my father and brothers drowned me in ignited and I hurried the remainder of my exit as to reach fresh air before my emotions rose high and gave way to anger. The door brought me into a cool night breeze and lead me to the powdery white beach of Dauphin Island, which lay somewhere off the coast of Alabama.

I felt weary as I left the house. Why did we do it? All of this stuff… Do we need it? We are sold at birth to the devil, but I fear that devil comes in the form of a dollar sign and with him comes that flask with which he poisons our conscious. Each drop forces us to believe that we are never good enough, that we can’t survive without him. We are driven mad by money and our possessions, and the more we struggle and obsess the tighter we are held by the clutches of the devil, the clutches of consumerism.

I was so tired of all these man-made paths towards satisfaction and entitlement. Paths that made us feel as if a nice house and a fancy car or a hot boyfriend defined the quality of our life. What is it that lies beyond our fortress of industry that makes us so afraid to leave the comforts of our couches and business suits? What can actually be measured by the amount of people you text and how many friends you have on Facebook? I feel a different lifestyle couldn’t really be that bad... My family always insisted on I following that normal path of life, one that is so intertwined with industry: I should go to college, get a degree, pay off my debts, get married, buy a house, buy a car, pay off those debts, have kids, buy them useless junk, plan my retirement, save for that, retire, get ill, and then die. I just don’t need that stuff. I strive to peel myself away from such traps and live simply, live free...These thoughts lingered with me for a moment longer until I decided to zip them up and throw them away for the time being so that my mind could be in a state of quiet peace. There was always time to ponder later.

I meandered my way down the steps of our rental beach house into the deep illuminated salty night. I felt my toes curl in calming pleasure through the cool soft sand. My hair ruffled in the pleasant ocean breeze and my skin responded to the wind like all my biology had awaited this reunion. How breathtaking? The beautiful white marble that forever called the heavens its home shined down upon all in its presence, spilling the earth with rays of midnight dreams and hope. Black glossy waves of the ocean glided over each other one after the other, a passive aggressive race to the sandy shores, the darkness of them illuminated by the immense artwork of the sky. A mosaic of creation and beauty sprawled across the tentacles of each peaceful and tranquilic wave. The steady lapses of water broke against the shore, easing into the rhythm of those heard within seashells, each whispering of its progression into the night with a calm, satisfying voice.

I rested on the sand and observed the unspoken promises that the universe had locked among its sky dwellers. I saw in that one moment thousands of years of art, poetry, music, literature, happiness and wonder… The muscles in my jaw stopped working and I felt the firm set lines around my mouth relax and ease into an expression of utter awe. I breathed in. All of it. Every ounce of beauty that I saw and I felt I breathed in. Inhale. And then a slow, purifying exhale. Ahhh. Vibrantly lit flames torched the unexplored black sky. Clusters of star dust gave purple and blue hues to the darkness where, in my heart, I felt sure there must be angels singing. Upon my retina images reflected the birth of life in that grand abyss of cosmos. My eyes were not restricted to the approximate three mile range of sight that they were here on earth, rather they saw beyond our solar system and out across that beautifully milky way, the depths of my eyes reaching into the millions of light years that separated us from the Andromeda galaxy and many others.

I felt this beautiful array of life wrap itself around the earth in a cozy embrace, blanketing it from here in Alabama, to back home in Wisconsin, then all the way to South Africa, France, Russia and yet further still to Malaysia and Cambodia. It surrounded us all. No matter what pole of the globe, or if you belonged to the west or east, that patchwork of brilliance showered the earth in all its magnificence the whole way around. Never abandoning us even if no one bothered to look, or if people were just too busy to see. As I observe the heavens embrace this sphere of madness and serenity I see the stars forever extend every which way. To me it seemed as if time itself were weaving in and out of my soul. I repeatedly tried to grasp the largeness and beauty of it all. This is my life. I live here. In this wondrous system of stars I find my home. In these moments the Universe had given me its hand and allowed me to breathe in its marvelous enormity.

A peculiar feeling it is. One I feel even today. I close my eyes and I see the grandeur of those organic lights. I study the patterns and puzzles they possess and then let my heart slowly pitter-patter to a stop as I become mesmerized once more with that stupefying glow. I never quite know how to explain it other than love. I fell in love with the universe that night. I fell in love with the beauty it beheld and the secrets it kept in the dark, away from the greedy clutches of man.

As the minutes turned into an hour I allowed myself to feel the pulchritude the globe of cosmos imposed upon my soul. Looking into the world that surrounds me puts all artificial beauty to shame and with that humanity to shame as well. I decided then that I didn’t need to abide to the normal path of life. My life doesn’t have to be defined by the stuff that I own and the man that I marry. I’ll make my own life. After all, humans existed far before the traps of consumerism were set and the laws of industry made synonymous with our definition of life.

We spend our days confined within walls, often working nine hours a day just to pay for a house that we’re gone from most of the time. Rather than being told what to do by a faceless boss with a tie I want to create my own adventure and find my own happiness. I want to let the beauty of the natural world flow in my blood whenever the chance is given. I want to put my being into embracing my time on this spectacular blue and green sphere. Here on Dauphin Island beauty surrounds me and with that beauty comes happiness. The Universe is forever infinite and within it there are boundless forms of life, none which are to go unmarveled. Rather than heading the example of my brothers and following societies life path, I yearn to seek the unexplored boundaries of wilderness and surrender myself to the majesty that nature has bestowed all around me. And so, my destiny in mind, I find myself beneath the Universe’s tedious gaze once more, sharing a moment that’s intimacy shall forever alter my perception of life. I drink in the night sky one last time, and head up the steps towards the house.