Your alarm blares, waking you from serenity. Condensation creeps along the windows, an early sign of the bleak day awaiting; a day you must embrace after emerging from your bed in which solace is found. Curtains drawn you glance outside expectant of another overcast but pleasant day, however, what you see is a surprise. A dark shadow is present in the air, mist shrouds all view, fog prohibits any sunlight from piercing through and bringing revelation. Leaving your place of safety to venture outside fog swallows you as if it were the mouth of a great mythical beast. The fog simply smothers all that it touches and forces uncomfortable confinement that ends only at the lakefront, where the grey tendrils envelop the beach before dispersing into oblivion as it evaporates.

Slowing walking across the seemingly endless field that inhabits the entirety of space between you and freedom you emit a deep breath, only for it to appear, linger, then disappear into the fog, leaving without a trace and with as little effort as required to birth it into the cool air. Days like this make you wonder if the sun will ever be seen again. The longing for its warming embrace intensifies the further you venture into the unknown. A re-occurring feeling that is encountered in many a situation.

Leaving family to discover yourself is one in particular that has been plaguing much of your thoughts of late, and these walks have had a tendency to relieve you for the time being and allow focus on the more immediate tasks at hand, however, this is not the case today. The lamentable weather saps you of any motivation or desire to further yourself, your sole purpose is to reach the edge of the lakefront. Pulling your puffer jacket tighter around your shivering body, feathers creep out, escaping. This proves to be a futile attempt at warding off the dampness that encounters and infiltrates you.

You begin to wonder, thinking of the fragility, of how the weather, one of the few things mankind cannot alter, has such a strong influence upon your being and upon how the day is viewed. Nevertheless, you continue with a darkened disposition, gloomy and un-excited for what the day may offer. 

The sound of the lake lapping against the beachfront intensifies as you meander closer and closer. Waves edging forward, trying to escape the bowl that they are enclosed in before being pushed back by a un-seeable and unstoppable force. This motion enthrals you, now standing on the border between land and water, mesmerised. Not moving from the spot. Your reflection looks back up at you, the lake like a mirror, the slightest touch shattering the serenity as if it were made of thin glass. Locking eyes with your dishevelled self, hair smattered on your forehead, drenched from the mist, you begin to feel yourself trying to remember at what point any motivation was lost in life.

At what point did you suddenly decide to stop trying, stop trying to further yourself, stop trying to search for a purpose in life. The answer does not come, sinking deeper into your conscience the harder you look for it, much like the small, unevenly coarse hand that held refuge in the clammy palm of your hand until it was projected into the depths of the lake. The more you look for it the murkier the water becomes, and the chances of its discovery diminish.

Realisation hits you. When your strength disappeared does not matter, what really matters is how you recover, how you deal with the despair and the struggle and ultimately, what you decide to do. You could follow the stone into the deep blue abyss that sits invitingly, eagerly encouraging you to give up. Or you could get up, turn towards the sky and await the imminent piercing of rays of sunlight.

Without warning, the weather deviates, sunlight glances off of your wet brow, the world is illuminated and a decision is formed in your mind.