There’s something strangely comforting about places that never stay still.
The sea changes every second, yet somehow always feels the same.
Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to it.
Not for the beaches. Not even for swimming. Honestly, I rarely care about that part. It’s the life around it that pulls me in. The movement. The constant noise underneath the silence. Fishing boats leaving before sunrise, ropes hitting metal poles in tiny harbors, seagulls screaming like they own the entire coastline. The smell of salt mixed with diesel from old engines. Everything feels alive there, even the things that probably shouldn’t.
I like towns near the sea because they never fully sleep. There’s always someone repairing nets, unloading crates, washing down terraces after midnight. Even at 5AM, when the streets are empty, the ports are already awake. You can feel it before you even see it.
Some evenings I just sit near the water doing absolutely nothing. No music. No phone. Watching reflections break apart with every small wave. Boats moving slowly in the distance like floating apartment windows. Sometimes fog rolls in and hides everything except a few scattered lights. It makes the world feel smaller in a good way.
The sea has its own rhythm and people who live near it slowly start moving with it. Lunches take longer. Conversations drift without urgency. Nobody seems obsessed with minutes anymore. Weather matters more than schedules. Wind changes plans. Storms interrupt days. And somehow that feels healthier than the perfectly controlled routines back home.
I think that’s what I love most about it.
The sea doesn’t care what mood you arrived in.
You can stand there carrying a head full of noise, stress, unfinished thoughts, and after an hour near the water something starts dissolving quietly on its own. Not dramatically. Just enough.
Like the tide slowly pulling things away while you aren’t paying attention.
And maybe that’s why some people spend their whole lives near the coast and never leave. Not because it’s beautiful, although it is. But because once you get used to that constant movement, that open horizon, that feeling that life is happening in every direction at once, other places can start feeling strangely still.
