For As Long As It Carries Me

I have always admired surfers for their patience.

They can stand before an enormous ocean and remain focused on something very simple: watching the water, reading its movement, and deciding when to enter.

What interests me is that the experience does not have to last very long.

A surfer may wait far longer for a wave than the wave will ever carry them. The ride itself might last only seconds.

And yet those seconds can be enough.

I think I have begun to understand my own life in much the same way.

I am no longer looking for the longest ride. I am looking for meaningful ones.

That does not mean waiting for some perfect moment, perfect person, or perfect circumstance to appear. I am beginning to believe that every moment has the possibility of being right for the time in which it exists.

The question is not whether it will last.

The question is whether I am present enough to recognize it while it is here.

Someone is visiting me now whom I had not seen in eleven years. There was once a relationship between us, and somehow this particular moment has allowed us to pick up something we had left behind.

It is not the same.

Neither of us is the same.

Perhaps that is exactly why it feels right now.

There is no need to pretend that the years between us did not happen, or that this moment must become permanent in order for it to matter.

Looking at this surfer walking toward the water, I do not see someone searching for the one perfect wave.

I see someone willing to enter the water again.

For As Long As It Carries Me places a solitary surfer within an expansive coastal landscape dominated by sky, water, and morning light.

The surfer occupies a relatively small portion of the frame and moves toward the right side of the composition, allowing the surrounding environment to remain the primary visual presence. The surfboard identifies intention without revealing what will happen next.

This absence of resolution is central to the photograph.

The surfer has not yet entered the water. No wave has been selected, and no ride has begun. The photograph instead preserves the interval between observation and participation.

The large cloud field, distant horizon, reflective shoreline, and small human figure together create an image concerned less with surfing itself than with anticipation, movement, and the temporary nature of experience.

A surfer does not ask a wave to last forever.

The wave arrives, carries them for whatever distance it can, and eventually returns them to the water.

The value was never in how long it lasted.

It was in being present for the ride.

I think I am beginning to understand people and moments the same way.

Not everyone who enters our lives is meant to remain there forever. That does not make them the wrong person, any more than a short wave is the wrong wave.

Some people accompany us for years.

Others arrive briefly.

Some return after we believed their part in our story had already ended.

There was a time when I might have measured the importance of something by how long it lasted. I do not think that way anymore.

Permanence is not the only measure of meaning.

A conversation can matter.

A weekend can matter.

A relationship that never becomes a lifetime can matter.

A wave that carries someone for only a few seconds can still be worth waiting for.

Sometimes something can be completely right for the moment in which it exists.

Perhaps wisdom is not learning how to hold on longer.

Perhaps it is learning when to release the expectation that everything beautiful must stay.

You wait.

You recognize it.

You step into it.

And for as long as it carries you, you are there.

For As Long As It Carries Me continues Francisco Colón's exploration of ordinary human presence within expansive environments.

Although the surfer provides the narrative point of entry, the photograph does not document a surfing performance. Instead, it records the moment before participation: a solitary figure approaching the Atlantic beneath an immense morning sky.

Within the larger Photography Wing, the work reflects recurring concerns with time, observation, movement, and the relationship between temporary experience and personal meaning.

The photograph asks the viewer to consider whether significance must be measured by duration, or whether an experience may be complete simply because it was fully lived while it existed.