Life lessons by way of swimming lessons
As long as I can remember, I have been uncomfortable in the water. This discomfort is not particularly pronounced, in the sense that I have no problem getting into a pool, or shallow rivers and lakes, but any time that I’ve found myself in an ocean, or any body of water of sufficient depth really, a subtle yet acute sense of unease comes over me that only increases with intensity the longer I remain in the water. I suspect that at the heart of this unease is a fear of drowning, which has not been helped by the fact that for the majority of my life I have not been a very strong swimmer. On several occasions, my fear of deep waters has proved inconvenient for me, but for the most part it has been barely noticeable, as I just avoided any and all opportunities to swim.
My relationship with swimming was one of avoidance until my late twenties, and it most likely would have stayed that way if not for my ex-girlfriend. My ex loved swimming. Having grown up in the countryside, to her summertime was synonymous with afternoons spent cooling off by a river. Naturally, our differing attitudes towards water came up fairly early in our relationship, but to her credit my ex never made it an issue. Despite being an avid swimmer who always imagined herself sharing this passion with any long-term partner, she never complained or pressured me about my aversion to swimming, even as my fear impacted the type of holidays that we could go on. What she did do however, was invite me to be more curious about the water and what exactly contributed to my fear of it.
After some time, I concluded that my issue with swimming in deep waters could be boiled down to two components: my lack of exposure to water, due to having avoided it for most of my life, and my lack of confidence in my swimming ability; to my mind both of these problems were solvable, I simply needed to take swimming lessons. In the spirit of honesty, I must say that I did drag my feet a little when it came to actually starting my lessons – thoughts of being the only adult in a pool filled with toddlers learning to swim made procrastination easy – but once I had, I took to the lessons like, dare I say it, a fish to water. I quickly improved my technique, and as my confidence with swimming skyrocketed, the sense of unease, which I had long since accepted as a permanent part of my reality, disappeared, and in its absence, I discovered a love for the water.
To this day, I find the fact that I love swimming surreal, but only half as much as I do the thought that I could have lived the rest of my life without discovering this, because as a child I had decided that swimming comfortably would be forever beyond me, and as an adult I had unquestioningly enforced that belief. I wonder, how often this kind of defeatist thinking has robbed someone of an opportunity to be happy? How many passion projects or would be hobbies have gone unrealised because someone confused not being good at something today, with not being good at something forever?
I am so grateful to myself (and my ex) that I took swimming lessons as an adult. Not only did it reward me with a simple pleasure that I’ve now incorporated into my mental health practice, but it serves as a lifelong reminder of how important it is to have a positive attitude towards personal self-improvement, especially if it forces you to venture out of your comfort zone and into dark waters.