Breathing Underwater

This is what I get to see almost every day now. The water is always perfect. I swam a mile today. Maybe it wasn't very fast, but it was a mile. I had a swimming breakthrough this week. I have been swimming fairly regularly again for almost a year and a half. Before that, I was 10 and swimming with the Santa Teresa Sea Otters. I am not a great swimmer, but I really love being in the water. I took a beginning swim class last year in school and learned a lot, but I have found that my greatest improvements have come as I swim. I swim and I try to pay attention to how my body is responding, engaging in the stroke. It just takes time, and every so often, something clicks; the necessity of keeping your hips up, engaging your core, rotating properly...

This week it was breathing. I usually don't swim much more than 100 yds without stopping to take a couple of extra breaths, and even that far isn't common. But something click last time and I have found that, suddenly, I can go more than 300 yds without stopping, I found my groove. I stopped getting nervous and it just flowed. I am excited to see just how far I can go.

While I was swimming I realized that I had learned to breathe underwater. Not literally of course, but I had mastered a skill that would allow me to stay under the water, continually in motion. I realize that I wax philosophical a little often here, but I am about to do it again...

How often do we think that we are incapable of doing something? How often does life seem too hard or too big to handle? More often than I think that we would like to admit. However, what I am discovering lately is that as long as I keep pushing forward, I pretty much always figure things out. In fact, the more I keep pushing through life and attempting to do difficult things (even if I don't do them well) the more I find that things "click." It seems to be the constant effort that counts. While it really does take all of life to figure things out, there are moments where suddenly, what once seemed impossible, and perhaps even life threatening, becomes manageable -- like breathing under water.