Conspiring in Our Favor

Oh man finally! I haven’t swam in 12 days. 12 DAYS! Well that is one streak I am happy to put an end to. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. We had heavy and voluminous rain start the evening of my last swim. We would go a day or so without rain and then get slammed again with another day of heavy rain. I believe they call this an atmospheric river. All the while, my mom landed in the hospital the following Tuesday and stayed until Friday - scary stuff. The first couple days of this week were full from taking her to the doctor. So it really hasn’t been until today where the water and my schedule have been clean enough to get into the water.

But oh what a day to come back. It brings me close to tears just to remember how beautiful it was. I just couldn’t ask for a better day. I wake up and the sky is clear, but cold. However, the high today is forecasted to be 69 and it is 66 by the time I drive into the beach parking lot close to 10:00. The ocean surface is smooth and there is basically no wind of any consequence in the day’s forecast which does not happen often. There is usually some breeze that kicks up by noonish and ruffles up the surface until at least evening time - and that’s on a good day.

It is the day before Thanksgiving today and most of my US co-workers are out and my Indian colleagues are asleep so the day feels lazily peaceful. I can pretty much choose whatever time I want to head to the beach. I’d maybe wait for it to get even warmer but I find myself between work tasks and decide to get going before starting on something new and interrupting my train of thought. I am feeling so very fortunate that I can have this kind of a life. I get paid pretty well to do something interesting and can step away to go to the beach in the middle of the day. It took 20 years, but I finally made it to where I wanted to be when I entered this profession - the ability to live wherever I want and not be tied to a single office location. And God knows I live where I want. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

As I walk down the stairs to the beach, I relish the feel of the sun on my skin. After 12 days, I hope I haven’t lost my tan! I am thinking a little about what the water temperature will be like - one of my favorite obsessions. I’ve been watching the buoy data and the numbers really haven’t moved much since my last swim. It might be a degree or two colder but that still puts us in the low 60’s which is a good place to be this time of the year. I watch my level of anticipation dance into the stress zone just a bit but it doesn’t get too far. I feel confident I will be comfortable enough after a while.

One of the first things I notice when I get to the beach is that Jupiter rock has resurfaced. It’s been buried completely beneath the sand for weeks now but today I can see about three feet of it. It’s good to see - like an old friend. This whole beach feels like an old friend that I have not seen for a while. 12 days, lets not let that happen again for a good long while.

The surf is super small. The Surfline morning report said 3-4+ which is not big but this is way smaller than that. I have noticed a pattern with the Surfline reports. When I wake up before dawn, the wave height numbers are based on the forecasting models and not on observation. Then between 6:30 and 7:00, someone actually looks at the surf through the web cams and updates the numbers. This “observed” number can be VERY unreliable. Basically because it is super hard to look at the waves through a web cam and get a good idea of how big it is. Then around 8:00, the wave height numbers are based on “smart cam” observations which is some new technology that allows the cams to calculate the size of the surf. This tends to be a little better than the human observations. Different beach breaks and cams provide better views than others but this has been my experience with the Strands and Salt Creek reports. I’m sure you find this fascinating.

I get in the water and it does feel coolish but not prohibitively so. The problem is the sun is so delightful and there are no waves to force me to get wet so I actually have to submerge myself using my own volition and it takes a little more will power than usual to do this. However not too much. I let my body fall in and I just breathe in the cold and start to swim and relax my body as best as I can and make friends with the water and meet it at just the exact temperature that it is and accept the fact that it is the perfect temperature because the perfect temperature is always the temperature that the water is at any given moment. I wouldn’t want the water to give me some other water that it is not.

At first I am thinking how the temps have dropped since my last swim and I still wouldn’t disagree but as soon as I am well past the small surf and into my stroke, it feels just fine. It feels better than fine. The day is exquisite. There is not a cloud in the sky and the water is like glass. At least the surface is smooth. Below the surface there is not much visibility but I still like very much what I see down there.

I swim south towards the headlands and I just let my mind lose itself and slip into the rhythm of the water. Everything is good here. I find myself filled with gratitude for this place. There are days where I feel so discontented with my life and my current situation but today is not one of those days. I look at where I am both in the water and with life in general and I realize how perfect things are.

For the one or two people out there who reads these posts, you have read about my struggles with surrender vs. action. I strongly believe that we need to surrender to the energy of the universe and let it guide us and propel us but I also believe that the universe needs us to move with it. It’s a dance that seems to take more than a lifetime to get good at. At what point am I forcing my own will over the flow of the universe and just getting in my own way and at what point am I avoiding what the universe is guiding me towards and getting stuck? I believe it is our feelings that hold the answers to these questions and learning to discern these feelings is our life’s work.

Last week while my mom was in the hospital, she suffered from a loss of cognitive functioning that made her confused and put her in a state I have never seen her in before. It was distressing. Besides not being able to operate her phone or the hospital remote, she seemed to be continually thinking that there was some task that she needed to be doing and by figuring things out she could get out of this place. She was stressed and trying to solve the puzzle of the hospital as if the entire nursing staff was waiting for her to accomplish this and had her discharge orders waiting for that moment.

Finally after getting her home on Friday, I watched her in her bedroom sitting in front of her nightstand before getting into bed. She is staring into her drawer trying to figure out god only knows what and then explaining something to me that I could not begin to comprehend. All she had to do is get into bed, close her eyes and relax. It was the same at the hospital. All she needed to do was lie back and let the hospital staff take care of her. As I am looking at her on that Friday night, I have an epiphany. I am looking at myself. I assume that I need to do this and that and I stress and I worry and I wonder what will happen if I do not do this or do that and all the while the universe is conspiring in my favor and I just need to relax and let it take care of me.

Don’t get me wrong. There are times when I really do need to do this and that. However as I recall those moments in my life where I took steps in a new directions and even when these steps seemed scarry and almost illogical, I remember the feeling of those steps being so utterly natural as if there was no other step I could possibly take. That is a different feeling from that constant worrisome dissonance that robs us of our joy and makes us think that we should be something other than we are.

So I swim here today and embrace that this is exactly what I should be doing because it seemed like there was nothing else I could possibly want to do. I let myself fall into a sense of well being that was always here to begin with.

PS: My mom is doing much better.