Swimming as Metaphor
It’s a different kind of a day today - mostly cloudy. I can’t remember the last time I have swam in cloudy conditions since the new year. I must have at some time right? If I had the motivation, I could easily prove it, but I have absolutely none. We have definitely had cloudy days for sure. I’m just not sure if I have swam on any of them.
There are a couple blue patches above but not enough to let in any significant sunlight. It definitely looks and feels cloudy. I’m wondering, do I really want to swim today? Yes I do. Conditions are otherwise perfect today and surf will be picking up tomorrow so I’d like to capitalize on this last day of small surf.
It’s just cold, but I know I’ll be fine. Hey the buoy temp was up to 61 this morning! Yeah…whatever.
Somehow I feel like this is all a good exercise. It’s good to just move myself step by step toward the water even if I am not chomping at the bit to get in right now. This isn’t some kind of “tough guy” thing or a way to force myself to do something I don’t want to do because I should just do it. I sure hope it isn’t. I know it could appear to be like all that. I know that after I get in the water, I’ll be glad that I did. I do so appreciate seeing the different faces of the beach and today has a much different face than the one I have seen over the past several weeks.
Life is filled with times when we need to face something that is not appealing on the surface but immensely rewarding once we can move forward into the act. I believe that exercising the will to move from my apartment to my car to the parking lot to the beach to the water is building the same muscles that help me exchange my energies with the world around me even when I am reluctant to do so at first. To me, swimming in the ocean is more than a form of exercise, it is a metaphor for life outside of the water. It is a “somewhat” controlled and safe environment where I can perform these exercises in the hope I will be more adept in the less predictable environments of my daily life.
So I manage to do all of this. I get myself to my car and then I get myself to the beach parking lot and then down to the beach and eventually before I know it, my feet are wet and I begin to walk due west and I can’t believe I am actually doing this but I am doing this. The water gets deeper and deeper and then I lean forward and here I am as if I have slipped behind a curtain to somewhere else entirely.
The beach is super cool and I am freaking cold but super glad that I am here. How is that? It amazes me. I am so NOT comfortable yet I am filled with gratitude to be where I am. Depending on when I look, the sky might have more blue one moment than another. In some places the clouds look dark and thick and ominous and in other places they are just a thin vapor that cannot quite hide the blue infinity behind them.
It doesn’t, but it feels as though the clouds muffle the sound here and casts a soft hush over the entire beach. It helps that there are so few people here. I just love gazing along the line of the edge of the bluff and watching the drama of this cloudscape. The ocean surface is super smooth today and dark and grey from the cloud cover. Small waves appear from what seems like a dark void and what light there is here shines on their faces and gives them a soft but electric-like glow. Then they crumble into white water that dissipates back into stillness.
I swim my usual south then north then south route. I’m watching how the water feels on my skin over the entire swim. I watch how my thoughts react to the changes in temperature. I watch how my anxiety subtly rises when the water grows colder. I tell my skin to accept the water as it is. I breathe. The cold does not go away but it transmutes into something that I can sit with. It sits across from my table. We don’t speak. We just watch the shore silently together.
