My favorite part of going into any body of water is the beautiful, sweet moment when my feet no longer touch solid ground. And I began a sort of floating, closer to flying, and gravity defying. When I’m suspended in between two states, when the water holds me, not falling, not ascending, simply floating.
The truth is I don’t love swimming, but I love floating. This is why I go into the ocean, into the pool, into the lake, I want that perfect moment when I cannot longer touch the bottom and resume to floating.
I remember my beach trip back in June, where I went past the waves and felt so giddy when I was suspended, at last, in the ocean. Then I lay down, like a dead body on the holiest of not-grounds, and watch the blue, blue sky. And I’m floating, the currents lulling me, the world perfect and unmarred. No mistakes, no reason, no fucking gravity pulling me down. I just wander into bliss and dream a dream that’s no dream but a leftover from a intuitive hit. Then I was rudely interrupted by dolphins.
But floating in reality is not an easy thing to do. Last year, I had the experience of trying to teach two different friends how to float in water. One at the creeks and one at the beach. The challenge was the same for each one, they just couldn’t stop moving. Each time I reassured them that their body would not sink, that stillness would create buoyancy, they would refute my claims. “But I’m starting to sink!” they would exclaim. And it was true, for as soon as they held still, their body would begin to dip down. This was a natural part of the process. In fact, this toggle of gravity pulling you down would soon be defeated by your body’s buoyancy (we are made of 60% water), which would push you right back up. Yet they always would begin to move after that first feeling of sinking, they would resist and fight and kick to swim again.
They didn’t trust they would float, no matter how I explained buoyancy or tried to show them how they had already been doing it all along without their own knowledge. They just didn’t trust that first sinking feeling would not endure. And they are not wrong for it.
Floating is surrender. Surrender is hard. We human beings are not hard-wired to surrender, we’re not plants, we’re animals. We fight, we bite, we dig our heels in, we don’t give up easily. We resist, we persist, and we kick our feet in the water. We won’t sink, fuck floating, we’re swimming. But I began writing about floating to reach writing about surrender. Because this summer, thus far, has been a massive lesson in the art of surrendering.
I keep being witness to beings who are so apt in the art of surrendering. A butterfly who glides on the wind, never fighting the current. The tree who sways its branches with the breeze, not a single leaf resisting. Every time I acknowledge their strength, their trust, for surrender requires a massive amount of both. We have to feel strong in ourselves to know we will endure, we have to trust in the process.
But the process fucking sucks. I’m never gonna lie to you. Process sucks. But process is process. Process is crying in yoga and being unable to breath properly through the session. Process is going dancing on a twisted ankle. Process is feeling a past wound stirred and re-directing the energy. Process is process.
To return to my friends not being able to float, I can’t fault them at all. I only learned how to float as a child in Mexico by the water. An uncle told me to hold still, even when I started to sink, and like a child who trusts, I trusted. It is so easy as a child to trust. To give in. To surrender to the process. We have a deep faith in the world that we slowly start to lose as we age. It is my life’s work to return again and again to that innocence. And it’s the ultimate process. To trust, to surrender, to float.
Over and over again. Forever, in fact. No matter how many times we sink.