Learning to Swim

Here’s a rule: you cannot learn to swim if you don’t get in the water. This rule applies to a lot of learnings—cooking, playing a musical instrument, bicycle riding—almost any endeavor we make that requires real-world experience.

Back to swimming, I’ve watched a young man learning to swim this summer. Yes, it took encouragement from those of us who know “the swimmers’ secret mysteries” to help overcome his fears. The water, drowning, death, the unknown depths, the fish and other wildlife observable from the surface, all stoked his fear and kept him out of the pure joy of water and swimming and the rest and relaxation of water and the ecstatic enjoyment of all of it. It was only fear that kept him from surrendering to us, to the water, to the eventual love of it.

He could have read books, gone to lectures about swimming, watched a well filmed historical documentary about the sport of swimming, and even taken tests over this “academic and historical material,” but nothing (none of it), would have sufficed or replaced the need for overcoming fear, getting in and letting the water actually become the Great Teacher.

Yes, our encouragement to get in, and once in, our instructions about swimming protocols, practices, and what to expect or do next, were important, but nothing could trump his actual personal experience and experimentation with water.

And yes, he is learning to swim, and yes, his “love affair” with our lake-water has begun, and so a new soul has been “taken” by water’s mysteries, and he is an initiate now into its wonder and depth.

And so it is, with learning to swim the vast Ocean of Love and Mercy, and the Infinite Sea of Divine Goodness, and eventually to plunge fearlessly with “lungs full” and heart-ready into the depths.

Here’s a rule: You cannot learn contemplative life without getting in its waters.