Flying While Swimming

A simple truth:  Your mind flies while you swim.  Those who don't like to swim laps believe it's the most boring thing in the world, but they're missing out on a remarkable experience.

In a pool, your body is essentially inside a big container, but your mind moves far beyond its boundaries, set free by the rhythm and motion of your arms and pattern of your breathing.

The coach on deck sets you off, but it's up to you to keep track of your laps and pay heed to pace and tempo.  If you've swum enough, your body settles into autodrive, and your mind is free to travel.  Of course there is a downside:  You lose track of the number of laps you've swum if you don't pay enough attention to it.  In the best swims, you keep track peripherally of your lap count, the way you're swimming.  It's very much like driving a car.  You pay just enough attention to the road and signage to keep yourself safe, but you're thinking about things a thousand miles away at the very same moment.   I've heard of some swimmers who worked on math problems, imagined conversations with friends, composed music, and others who escape to a place where they feel heroic and immortal.  Hardly ever do you notice the bottom of the pool with its wide black stripe below you.  Instead, you fly weightlessly.

Yoga teaches that rhythmic breathing, disciplined movement and mild exertion create mindfulness.  It's a meditation, a release of the mind and creative imagination that at the same time relaxes and reintegrates your body, mind and spirit.  Feeling yourself moving with the currents and pressure of the water, held afloat, sensing the resistance of still, calm water on your hands and arms as you stroke, focuses your mind initially on the task at hand.  But, as you settle into a pace, you may find yourself listening to a song, making plans for dinner, driving to Colorado, or flying to Paris.  Why not?  Anything's possible in the mind, especially when the body is busy at a repetitive movement like freestyle.

There is a balance to strike between being lost in thought and putting out physical effort.  Many times, especially for swimmers struggling to make an interval (finish the set of laps before they have to start again), the physical effort dominates the experience.  Once you find a balanced state, relaxed and aware yet detached and free, no container can hold you.  Who knows, you may find yourself anywhere in the universe, where time doesn't matter anymore.  

The Best Intentions and Broken Water Heaters

My neighbor's water heater blew up and water flooded everywhere including into our garage.  Lots of things are soaked and have to be dried out.  That in itself is aggravating since things just don't dry out in this town.  With gray fog, ocean humidity and cool temperatures, mold and fungus are leering spectors for householders.  We have been lucky in that regard.  Our place is built up above the garage.  The living space is dry.  The garage, down below, is where the sog is, and it's going to take some diligence to get it dry again.  It has to be done; the negative malodorous consequences are too great to risk if I don't.

Right away, I'm blaming, pointing fingers, filling with anger.  An irritable mood arises and I am sucked into it unless I kick and scream and resist with all my might.  It's ugly, this mood conflict.  If I were really highly evolved, I would find a way to be grateful for an opportunity for personal growth in this somewhere.  I'll compromise and just get the work done as quickly as I can and hope for better weather to help the water evaporate.  A fan would be good...

Water heaters give out, let go their contents and water flows, seeping everywhere, making sodden blobs of boxes and turning rugs or carpet into sponges.  What was going smoothly and working fine is now useless and expensive, taking time and money to repair.

I'm thinking about how this looks a lot like obstacles and impediments to accomplishing the notable things we dream of.  On the biggest scale, people and organizations want to effect peace but have to overcome one thing after another to do so.  Little things, things that seem to gobble up time and energy and seem so fruitless, pop up over and over again.  Arguments, policy interpretations, missing information, power struggles among people who must work together slow progress, divert intention.

On a smaller scale, like my scale today, I was imagining I had a two-hour window of time to work on a writing project I've begun, but the soggy mess is now the higher priority, and the more interesting work will again be delayed.  I'm hoping it builds character and I'll be a better person for it.  I'd rather be that than irritable and angry, because that's just plain poison to me and my spirit.

I can choose and I am.  Okay, now for those rugs...