This weekend, as we speak, I’m headed to the beach with my family for our summer vacation. And in that spirit, I’ve been digging into beach reads.

The one I picked up is The Gold Coast by Nelson DeMille. It’s set on Long Island, New York — right on the harbor — and the more I read, the more it reminded me of another book a lot of us read in high school: The Great Gatsby.

Same setting. Same themes of wealth, longing, and people who are never quite satisfied.

And that got me thinking about one of the small but powerful images from The Great Gatsby — the green light.

It’s a light at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock, across the water from Gatsby’s mansion. Daisy was Gatsby's lost love. Every night, Gatsby stares out at it. To anyone else, it’s just a lamp. But to him, it’s everything: a symbol of hope, love, ambition, the future he believes is still possible.

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the glorious future that year by year recedes before us.”

Fitzgerald wasn’t writing about running — but he might as well have been.

Because runners have green lights, too.

Sometimes it’s a time goal. Sometimes it’s a comeback. Sometimes it’s the version of yourself you know is still in there — healthier, stronger, more alive.

And while we may not always catch that dream exactly the way we imagined, there’s something noble in the reaching. Gatsby never got his dream, but he kept going. And in that, he was more alive than anyone else around him.

We run for a lot of reasons. But deep down, we’re all chasing something. A feeling. A breakthrough. A better version of ourselves, just across the water.

Keep reaching for your green light.

— George