"To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float." -- Alan Watts
The symbolism of the water's edge helps me navigate my way
through life. It gives me clear boundaries to my physical existence that mark
where I can proceed and where I need to stop or get wet or get out of the boat
and step on shore. These boundaries--these shores, beaches, riverbanks--exist
both when I am on dry land or floating upon the water. We can transition
between the medium easily enough, but not without some skills or mechanisms to
allow us to survive for long. Especially if moving from dry to wet. We need
protection from hypothermia, drowning and now bull sharks swimming up our
freshwater rivers. Bull sharks, I kid you not. A thousand miles up the
Mississippi River caught in Illinois. Saw it on "River Monsters" on
the television so it must be true. Probably trying to make it to Chicago's
Shedd Aquarium.
I am often envious of animals such as the waterfowl and
shore birds. They can transition an additional medium when they take flight and
wing through the sky. To be able to fly without a ton of steel and plastic and
jet fuel would be outstanding.
I use the transition symbolism in tackling other aspects of
my life, which lately consists in what I am going to spend the remainder of my
working career doing. Right now, not unlike many other people in the past,
present and probably the future, I am standing on the shore and trying to
decide what stroke to swim, or what boat to paddle or even if this canal needs
to be crossed. At least I need to decide when to cross it and what I hope to
find when I reach the other shore.
I believe it must depend on the means I use to cross it, and
like Alan Watts said, "relax and float" may beach me where I was
meant to be.
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