Swimming is one of my favourite forms of exercise. There’s just something about gliding underwater that makes me feel so strong, yet peaceful; so fast, but also still. I know it sounds like I’m over-egging the pudding, but it’s as much a spiritual experience or active meditation as it is a workout. I feel like my best, most authentic self when I’ve been for a swim. I absolutely love it.
But here’s the rub: I still avoid going, despite how great it makes me feel.
I haven’t been swimming for months now. Because it was too cold and dark, too early. I was too tired, too lazy, too fat and ugly to wear a costume in public… Because I hadn’t shaved my legs or had a pizza hangover from the night before.
It’s one of the strangest ironies of being a human being, that we make excuses to avoid doing things that make us feel fabulous. If I’d put half as much effort into actually going swimming, as I had writing this blog, I’d be splashing about in the pool right now.
The last few days, I’ve been talking about the need to ‘meet yourself where you are;’ of setting aside unrealistic expectations and setting kinder, smaller and more achievable goals. I’d actually used the swimming baths as an example of this, being that I’d planned on getting there this week but after 6 months off, it just felt like too much, so I opted to peddle on the exercise bike instead.
I stand by these words. I meant every one. But after receiving an email yesterday afternoon, I feel obligated to add a caveat. See, yesterday I got word that the pool is closing for refurbishment – from the end of January to the end of April. So now, I can’t go for a swim, even if I wanted to.
In the modern world, it’s easy to become complacent. We put things off again and again, because we assume that the thing we’re avoiding is still going to be there and that nothing will change in the meantime. My email from the gym was a poignant reminder that this just isn’t the case. Things happen that are outside of our control, like the swimming baths closing, despite you being ready to swim.
Like many people, I have a habit of waiting too long in order to feel ‘ready’ to do things. Paradoxical as it is, you get ready for most things by actually doing them – no matter nervously, horribly, awkwardly. It’s a lesson I seemed doomed to learn, over and over again.
And sometimes, you wait so long to do something that the world changes around you – the swimming baths close, the moment passes, the job goes to someone else, the friend moves away… You end up in a position where you’re unable to do the thing that you’d planned to. You end up missing out.
The swimming baths being refurbished is rather low down on the scale of life’s grand problems. And I can at least take comfort from the way I felt, when I read that email. I struggle, at times, to really know my own feelings, but reading that email I felt visceral disappointment, deep in my belly.
Sometimes, it takes something being taken away, for us to realise how much we actually value it.
Maybe I’ll have a look for another baths while mine is closed. I’ll keep you posted!
Anxious-Ambition.com 