A place to unwind my soul

Boulder promenade along Loyola University Chicago. Photo: Gerald Farinas.

When the world feels too loud, when stress coils itself tight around my neck and shoulders, I retreat.

Not far—just a short walk from my apartment where Sheridan Road bends like a comma in a long, unfinished sentence.

There, nestled between the lake and the architecture of faith, is a spot that seems like it was carved into the world just for me.

It’s not hidden. In fact, many pass by it without pause. But I linger.

This place sits in front of Madonna Della Strada, the elegant Art Deco Jesuit chapel at Loyola University Chicago. To some, it’s just a building. To me, it’s a landmark of stillness. The kind of stillness that isn’t silent, but alive.

I settle in on a concrete bench that separates the sea from land, or a large boulder along the parade, and let the lake speak.

The water laps rhythmically against the shoreline stones—never hurried, never frantic, just the slow patience of nature at work.

The sound is familiar, like an old friend reminding me to breathe.

Every gentle slap of water on rock tells me that not everything needs to be solved right now.

Some things just are.

The breeze is a choir all its own, rustling through the tall prairie grasses that line the lakefront path. It rushes and flutters, sometimes soft, sometimes bold—like a breath of reassurance from something much older than me.

And as it blows, it carries with it a cooling whisper on summer nights, a secret only the lake knows, drifting through the air like incense from an invisible censer.

Above me, seagulls cry out in squabbling choruses.

Other shorebirds trade calls across the sky, stitching the air together with their voices.

Occasionally, I hear the hollow thump of tied-up wood rescue canoes on a beach a half-mile north—half in the lake, half on the beach—tapping a heartbeat rhythm against each other. They remind me of in-between places, of not needing to be fully anchored or fully free to have purpose.

Here, everything breathes. And in this breathing place, I can let go.

Of lists.

Of deadlines.

Of worry.

This patch of land—between water and chapel, between movement and stillness—is where I find alignment again.

Not just with myself, but with the pulse of the world.

It’s where I remember that I am small, but not insignificant.

That stress, like the wind, will pass.

That even in chaos, there is a shoreline waiting for me to sit, to listen, and to simply be.

After a run at Loyola University Chicago. Photo: Gerald Farinas.