Swim to swim

How to keep liking a thing

Queen’s Bath, Kauaʻi 6.14.18

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The purpose of swimming is to enjoy the water. How you do that is up to you, but you have to get wet. Otherwise, why did you even come to the water in the first place? To watch other people swim? I don’t think so. 

When you get there, make a splash all you want. Draw attention to yourself on the diving board. Shout a barbaric cry from the rope swing as you lunge towards your wet fate. Just don’t forget what brought you there: the water.

A cannonball can be fun, but the real satisfaction is being partially or completely immersed. Feeling the temperature of the water, checking to see whether you can reach the bottom with your feet, touching your toes to whatever slimy rocks or muddy sand lies beneath. Notice how it bounces you gradually from here to there, or how it lifts you up towards the light and keeps you there close to the surface where you can be at once comfortable and vulnerable.

There are lots of different waters available for your sampling. Don’t think about it too hard, or you might get overwhelmed. You probably will not be able to swim in all the waters this lifetime, and that’s just fine. The point is to let yourself be immersed in the waters that you do find. Spend some time feeling their rhythms, reaching for their edges.

Picking your favorite waters is part of the fun too. I like a deep tide pool tucked into piles of igneous rock, and an empty swimming pool, and a hot pool full of lazy people standing in the shallow end holding iced coffees at 7:00 in the morning. Maybe you like a stony river, or a lake covered with lily pads, or the soft blue corners of the Gulf of Mexico on the Florida coast.

Find your favorites and come back to them as much as you’d like. You can tell people you’re going, you can take pictures of yourself jumping off a cliff into the blue murk, you can yodel while you’re falling through the air, but you’ll find that the landing is nothing without the water. 

Be wary of people who tell you to dive in. They don’t know your situation — how you swim, how you float, what you like about the experience — and they might not know the water — its depth, its temperature, the lives inside of it. Some of those people can’t even swim.  

This trip to the water was supposed to be about you, so keep it that way.

This song is from Jumping the Shark, an album made up of catchy tunes that make fun of sketchy people.

Thanks for reading,

Katya