Choosing How to Swim
Some people struggle to create habits. Others explain how they always go to bed and rise at the same exact times each day, and perhaps also brag about how they’re able to stick to their carefully constructed workout regimes. Others create podcasts or attempt to sell books filled with formulas to follow to ensure our emotional and physical wellbeing. They know many of us long to organize our lives into predictable and repeatable behaviors, but some of us would rather just let our lives flow. Predictability and scheduled behaviors feel a little too much to me like shoving my life’s flow into a culvert so it doesn’t burp up unexpectedly onto the feet of polite society. City rivers have been forced out of sight, far below the streets, their waters no longer touched by light, not even the reflected light of the moon. Dams are built to stop or change the flow of other rivers. I admire a good schedule but I’ve never met one I want to dance with regularly. I have my own rituals but they’re based on where I am in my own flow on any given day. Sometimes I bodysurf hard, gleefully riding my flow with total awareness of each moment. I fly comfortably forward buoyed by the hope I carry in one pocket and the uncertainty I carry in the other. During these moments I remain undaunted by not knowing where I will end up. Other days I swim hard against the current, my tears mixing with the flow around me as I let myself feel a little despair. When I’m physically exhausted, I grab onto whatever floats by. If I’m emotionally weary I lay my cheek upon some flotsam and breathe through what I don’t yet know. Sometimes I float on my back and let the flow take me where it will because at that moment I don’t trust myself to trust the flow. I’m happy for you if schedules simplify your world. They’re not for me. I believe almost any ritual can be sacred, scheduled or not. Please don’t try to rescue me if I seem to splash more than you do, and I promise I won’t try to dunk you if I see you swimming by with almost perfect form.
