“Not knowing is a good place to start.” –Fredrik Bakman, Anxious People
It would seem as though I learn the most when I do the least.
I am not in love with hustle culture, with toxic “to-do” lists, with busyness as a badge of honour. This is partly because I’m a homebody and an introvert but also? Because I know that shit doesn’t work.
I know that goal-orientation as a lifestyle has an expiration date, and usually ends in one form or another of drowning: drowning in anxiety, drowning in frustration, drowning in your own and/or others’ ineptitude; just hitting a wall and flailing your way to submersion.
The drowning is either the end or the beginning.
I’ve been in fear of drowning twice in my life: once in a river in Alabama, and more recently (and beautifully) in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Manly. In both instances, I was flailing and fighting before I realised I couldn’t save myself. In Alabama, the river carried me to shore. In Manly, it was the hand of a friend. This past weekend, I attempted that same swim with the same friend. This time, the water was calmer–and so was I. Instead of tackling the waves, I rode them. I floated more. I did less. And I made it there–and back. And afterward, I had champagne.
This time, the water was calmer, yes, but it was also murkier due to recent rainstorms. But I had more time to look. I saw a stingray and massive fish, along with schools of tiny ones. There’s more time to enjoy the view when you’re not fighting to maintain it.
I think stillness is a secret we’re still not letting ourselves in on.
The day after my swim, while Little Brother shot for nothing but net at a basketball camp, The Kid and I went to the local water park and slid for an hour. He wanted to go on the fast one, so I told him to go for it, then he made it clear that he meant not solo, so I sat behind him on the mat and pushed us off, and for about twenty seconds–ten times in a row–we screamed and laughed our way through a blue flume, speeding around its curves and splashing into the pool at the end.
His delight was pure. So was mine. There was nothing we could control once we pushed off, and the freedom was terrifying and exhilarating.
I’ve seen the video. I was disgusted, but not surprised. This sort of eruption is a natural result of an identity built on the sinking sand of personal achievement, hustle culture, toxic busyness, and “drink more water”-type philosophies that avoid the danger of deeper water for the shallow safety of the shoreline. You don’t value life more by mastering it (as if that’s possible), but by failing and flailing and, repeatedly, being saved by a grace bigger than yourself.
People who have seen crazy things can believe crazy things. People who have stopped trying to maintain beauty are the ones who can truly behold it. There was a time, for example, when a bunch of women told a bunch of men a story, and (typically) the men didn’t believe the women because their tale sounded like nonsense. Well, almost all the men didn’t believe. One did–the one who had briefly tiptoed across water; the one who had disappointed himself by doing a thing he’d never thought himself capable of. People who have sunk to depths they never knew existed? They’re the ones with the best views, the best stories.
The wall-hittings, and the drownings–these are invitations. Invitations to deeper water, where toes can’t touch bottom but grace can–and it holds.