Beneath the Surface

The pier has become one of my favorite waiting places. Yesterday, as my kid was at art class, I took a seat and just let myself breathe. The tide was coming in, pressing against the pilings, pulling back, and returning again. The water was brackish and greenish-brown, hard to see through, carrying both the salt of the sea and the sediment of the shore.

Pelicans and seagulls resting on the dock. The air was quiet except for the steady rhythm of water breaking against rock. And the sun scattered its light across the surface so the water seemed to shimmer.

At first, I thought that shimmer was only the reflection of light. Ripples, sparkle, nothing more. But as I stared longer, I caught a different kind of movement. Tiny silver flashes, darting here and there. Fish. At first only a few, so faint I wondered if I was imagining them.

Then I leaned closer, kept watching. And suddenly I saw them everywhere — schools of tiny silverfish, just a foot or two beneath the surface, blending so well with the murky water that they were almost invisible. What I had mistaken for sunlight was, in fact, life.

That moment has been sitting with me.

So often, what’s beneath the surface takes time to notice. At first, it all looks like noise: the glare, the ripple, the distraction. But if we pause long enough, if we keep watching, the patterns begin to reveal themselves. What looks small or uncertain at first becomes something much larger, moving as one, hidden in plain sight.

This is true of our inner purpose. The signals are often subtle. They don’t arrive in bold letters or sweeping revelations. More often, they begin as glimmers, something that could be mistaken for reflection or chance. But if we sit with them, if we let our gaze soften, we discover there is far more depth than we first assumed.

It’s also true in organizational life. Metrics and dashboards tell part of the story, but the real signals often start quietly. A shift in tone on the team. A small pattern of missed connections. A sense of energy building beneath the surface. At first, these things can be easy to dismiss. But if we don’t notice them, we risk missing the schools of meaning moving just out of sight.

For me, that moment on the pier was a reminder of what it takes to truly see. To slow down. To look twice. To be curious about what else might be there.

Sometimes purpose, progress, and possibility don’t crash like waves. They shimmer quietly beneath the surface, waiting for us to notice.