“Our individual thoughts are not, as we think, the deep, but only the foam upon the deep.” – W.B. Yeats.
The ocean is the perfect metaphor for our fears, and thoughts–powerful, relentless, often mysterious and sometimes overwhelming. For me the ocean, like our body of fears, is the great unknown. It also represents a sea of possibilities and discovery if we have the courage to get in the water.
An ex-boyfriend once said to me: “It would have been so much easier if you could just have been more shallow,” in explaining why he ran from the relationship when things got “too deep.”
You see, I like to go deep–it’s in my nature. In my writing and in my life, I’ve found you’ve have to go deep to find the best stuff. It’s often dark, cold, and a little scary in down there, but there’s so much more to see, experience, and be in awe of than on the surface.
But you can’t dive deep with one foot in the sand or, as Yeats said, in the foam.
I’ll never forget when I learned to scuba dive, on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Both a challenge and a test of overcoming my fear of drowning in the middle of the Pacific or being mutilated by a Great White shark, it was an experience I couldn’t pass up. It was also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get up close and personal with the marine life of one of the planet’s premiere diving locations and the world’s largest living organism – the Great Barrier Reef.
The scuba training proceeded gradually. With an open mind and a full tank of air, I practiced breathing through a regulator and learned the subtle art of ascending and descending in a semi-controlled manner in a swimming pool. From the pool, we learned to master shallow dives just off shore; and from there we plunged deep into the Pacific after about a three-hour boat ride out to the Reef, and into an unimaginable underwater world.
There are several critical things to remember in order to dive safely, but two stick in my mind: double check that you have a full tank of air, and remember to breathe.
Uh, remember to breathe? Seems obvious, right? But you’d be surprised how claustrophobic (and anxious) you feel when surrounded by the weight of 15 metres of water above you and by the sound of your own, amplified, breathing. Within minutes (usually) you find your own rhythm of movement and breath, and fear is replaced with exhilaration. The thrill of adventure and discovery surpass anxiety, and with each dive you gather the courage and skill to go deeper. If you can harness the fear, it becomes fuel to propel you to greater depths and adventures.
At the edge of our fears, like the depths of the ocean, worlds are exposed, questions arise and sometimes answers appear.
We just have to leave the security of the shore…and remember to breathe.