Swimming Life's Ocean

Life is like swimming an ocean. As children you stayed near shore in the shallows. You could frolic in the water with abandon, without strife, able to sit in the water, with one cheek in the ocean and the other on the sand.

But as you get older and bolder, you frolic farther out, bringing toys to play in the wind and sea. Life is a thrill. You are vibrant and intense on so many levels. But yet, you learn a healthy respect for the ocean of life. And it’s frightening out there. You might have already experienced Life’s slap. It might be too much for some of you and you quickly head back to shore. Peter Pan forever.

Then it’s time to swim because you’re way out there on your own. There’s no shore. Pick a direction and go. Find your own shore. Swim! Swim. You have to swim.

From now on in Life, you swim, and swim, and swim. In Life’s ocean, there is always someone swimming. Maybe they are swimming below the water line, poor bastards, the struggle immense. Or you might look up and yeah, some lucky or rich sons of bitches are skimming over the top of the water barely getting their feet wet. And you keep swimming. You become a strong swimmer and get respites when you reach a sand bar or two. But a sand foundation is not stable and erodes, so you swim on.

How many people are fuckin’ swimming out here anyways? See there, some have come to a stop. Sitting alone atop a small un-tethered island where the legal safety limit of occupancy is one. For so many reasons, they will stay out here in the vast ocean of life and let the currents take them where it may. I look at them with slight envy and at the same time with pity. I need to swim on.

See there below me, some are drowning. The depths, the murky waters and even the light coming through the water doesn’t help. It’s hard to see them through the moving prisms of light and ocean waves giving me the illusion that they're moving ever so slowly. But no, they are not. They look upward with unseeing blank eyes. I turn away and swim harder. I don’t want to be lured downward and become a permanent guest.

Then I catch up to the slow ones, the old ones. They have been swimming for years and their struggle shows in their faces. I’m afraid of them. They are reminders of things yet to come. They look around for someone to help them, yelling out that they have wisdom in swimming, things to teach if one would come to them. But no one will come. What do I have, to trade for this wisdom, the little strength I have left, to help buoy them? So many swim away.

See there, some are skimming. There is no swimming for them. Oh, they will tell you they have swum before, or that their struggle is as mighty as anyone else’s, but we don’t believe them. They run over us with their boards or boats, sails in the wind, too fast to see the people struggling in the water. They belong above the water line and see nothing but the horizon in front of them.

Most want to be skimmers. But for most of us, we will always be swimming, constantly.

To be happy do I have to make believe I like to swim? Become adept in Life’s ocean? Learn to take more breaths than to gulp water? Not happy perhaps, even tortured by it at times, but resigned and accepting that I will be swimming to the end of my days.