Moving Mountains

I’m out the door a little before 9:30 with just enough time to squeeze in a swim before my 12:00 meeting. I have to meet with outside counsel so I better be back in time because they charge by the hour. It’s overcast skies this morning but I see hints of blueness here and there coming and going in varying levels of luminosity. As I drive to the beach, there are moments where the sun seems to rally and I can feel its heat coming through my windows. Then it fades a few seconds later. Come on sun! We can do this! As if I can play some active role in the play between cloud and sun. Didn’t Jesus say if we had faith as small as a mustard seed, we could move mountains? I’m gonna keep trying.

I get to the beach and I don’t care what the cloud situation is here, it’s beautiful. As I look south, the clouds appear dark and dense but seem to grow softer as I look north and east. I’m starting to see true blue sky just east of the bluff at the edge of the shore. That sky leaks its light onto the water and gives it this soft and ethereal blue tone that I must say is delightful to look at.

The water washes over my feet and it feels good. I feel so fortunate that I get to spend time here. Once I immerse myself in that water, my work is a world away. My work is by no means terrible but I’d sure rather be here. I think of my coworkers who are spread out over the country and also India. None of them get to do this. I try to imagine what it would be like to envision this activity without having ever participated. When I think of getting into the water for a swim, I know exactly what that is like. However to the majority of my fellow humans, there is simply no contextual foothold on which to stand.

I walk out into the small surf. Yep! It’s exactly how I imagined it would be. Still, it is completely different from my last swim and the one before that.

I swim south. My skin feels a little cold for the first 20 seconds and then it’s all just nice. I try to collapse my attention onto this feeling of being in the water. I feel free. I feel good and I feel free. When I am in the water, I often attribute deific qualities to the ocean that immediately surrounds me. I realize this is all purely metaphoric but also it is not. I think we all have access to a mindset where imagination can invade our reality. We inhabit a perception where our field of vision becomes creative expression. I follow this perspective and the water becomes love. I am surrounded in love. The act of swimming, even breathing here, becomes a means of cycling that love in an embodied manner.

I’ve been thinking of how I envision myself lately and I find myself reflecting upon this here. I’ve had some experiences these last couple of weeks where I have not been so nice to myself. I’ve wandered well outside of my comfort zone and done some things that have not been so socially graceful. It’s easy for me to tell myself what a misfit I am. I do this and it becomes a slippery slope until I have to stop myself from sliding as I realize that I am the one who chose to slide down the slide and I have the power to pull myself back up. I have the power to create the story I spin about myself. Sure, I can choose the misfit story. Like everyone else, I do some things that are less than skillful. Also like everyone else, I do have strengths and am overall a pretty competent person. I like the “competent” story. It’s completely truthful and makes me feel much better about myself. When I subscribe to this more positive story, everything looks and feels better. The gravity I walk in becomes far less dense. I can move forward with more ease.

So I swim and every stroke of my arms becomes a choice to weave a better story. Every kick is another threading of the needle to create a garment far more comfortable than the hair shirt thrown together by the misfit narrative. I stare at the horizon and the lifeguard tower with the hills of Laguna standing behind it and I project my competent self out into these distances as an act of faith. I trade in one set of beliefs for another. With these new beliefs, I may just be able to move mountains.