Without water

These ended up out of order, but here's another week from swimming season:

            This Sunday passed without water for me.  I wasn't feeling well, and wasn't ready to fight that in the water, so I relaxed and vegged with a movie.  The Green Lantern is about a cocky pilot who is chosen by an alien ring to become a superhero in green spandex.  He fights evil with the force of his will.  Cool. 

            What stands out to me about his character are two things.  One, he is told by another alien that his protections/fighting can only be as strong as his will.  And they chose green, which is the color of the heart chakra, to represent will.  Hmm, maybe there are lessons I can learn in a superhero movie that will help with swimming.  You are only as strong as your will (which to me means to be stubborn about the things which are important to me). 

            Then there was the moment when the pretty girl tells Hal Jordan that the ring could tell that he had something other people didn't.  He was arguing that he wasn't supposed to be afraid, but he was.  She told him that he had the ability to overcome fear, and that was why this mysterious alien force had chosen him, because he could go past his fear and therefore defeat the evil force which was powered by fear. 

            So, the lesson would seem to be that one can accomplish anything that they will to happen (an important lesson in its own right), and that a person who can move past their fear can defeat the greatest monsters IF those monsters gain strength from your fear.  Thus, if the scariest part of facing swimming is the fear of drowning, I should visualize it as a monster which is fueled by my fear.  Not hard to do.  The day this all began it was kind of like being swallowed by a huge creature with a mouth that was a freakishly cheerful blue on the inside.  So, if he's still waiting for me in every body of water, I should do like Hal did: plow right through him and destroy him from the inside out. 

            My will has always been strong.  I just have to focus it on the right things.  As his trainer told him, if you are afraid, you can't think, and if you can't think, you can't fight or defend yourself, and then you die.  Screw that.  If I am forced to swim, it will be to rescue Becca, and so I have to think of that, and move past the fear of the monster I am plowing through and see only her.  If I can still think, I can remember how to swim, how to move to stay afloat and get to her.  Nothing else matters. And as a friend once pointed out to me, my instincts won’t let me NOT get to her if it’s just water and not sharks or an undertow or something keeping me from swimming to her.  I care about her too much not to focus on her safety. 

            Brightest day, darkest night, no water shall escape my sight... I need to get a green swimsuit.