The Swimming Lesson

My mother made sure that my sister and I knew how to swim. I took lessons from age 7 to age 9. Summer would come, and we would head to the pool at the local Air Force base. It seemed that my lessons would always go the same way: I would start out scared as hell, flailing my hands everywhere in the water, grasping for the edge. By the time the last day of the lessons would come, however, I would be confident, moving through the water with relative ease. Now, realize that even though I would leave sure of myself, the next summer I would return only to go through the same process. It seemed that I had totally forgotten about the esteem I had gathered during the previous lessons! Panic would set in again and I would be back to square uno. I stopped taking lessons when I was 10. I had become a strong enough swimmer to go to the public pool with friends.
Today, I think about the swimming experience and how much it is an anology for our life's journey's. Often times we go through one thing, struggling and gasping for oxygen, and we fight our way through it and come out feeling better about ourselves. This rush of "feeling better" only lasts until we come back "next summer" for our next "swimming lesson", where we start the whole thing all over again, almost completely oblivious to strides that were made previously. The key is to hold on to that feeling of empowerment, even when your not "in the water". Had I done this, I might have been leaping off of the high dive sooner.
Swimming in general is a great analogy for life. When swimming, if you fight against the water, you lose energy and will eventually drown. To swim correctly is to move with the water and to recognize your own buoyancy. The rougher the water, the more you have to move with it. Anyone who has ever swam in the ocean can tell you how futile it is to try and swim against the current. If you look at the word "current" with another meaning(i.e up to date, presently), it points even more to the idea of adapting to the moment. The "current" moment. Treading water is nice, but one can only do this for so long before they run out of energy and go under. This can be likened to stagnation, staying in one place(which is essentially what treading water is). The key is to keep it moving as much as possible until you reach the "shores" or the "edge" of self realization.

Learn to "swim" my friends, and life is a beach!