Laps

I've been a lap swimmer since my late twenties.  Just before I decided to get into lap swimming many of us at First Nazarene got into what a physiologist, also at the church, dubbed 'temple conditioning'...mostly around becoming a runner.  We all bought running shoes and clothing. I tried it for about six months...but it never caught on with me.  The only thing I liked about running was each time I quit.  So, I thought about what I'd enjoyed as a kid--swimming and bicycling--and got into both.  Even though I'd never had any formal lessons I'd picked up swimming from Kelvin, one of my neighborhood buddies who’d had taken lessons...but I'd never done lap swimming.  Around age twenty-eight I started skipping lunch and going to the Y in East Nashville, a decades old facility with a small, ancient pool.  It wasn't busy but there were a couple of other guys who swam at the same time--so I discretely watched them.  Eventually I got up the nerve to ask for pointers.  One of the guys...my 'informal coach' happened to be a social worker as well.  It took me awhile but I was determined declaring that if I had to drink the entire pool I was going to learn now (I only drank half).  

I've kept swimming....as well as cycling over these years trying to make it to the gym three times each week.  One morning as I began plowing through the water it felt like molasses.  Most of my joints were crying out and the muscles along with them saying: ’not a good day to swim...PASS...get out of the pool...blame it on getting old'.  But I stayed and kept plowing.  Then about the ten-twelve-minute mark...I realized that the 'joint and muscle screaming' was gone and I felt like I could swim the rest of the morning.  I love that feeling...but you don't get there unless you stay in the pool.  It's commonly referred to as the 'runner's high' but it occurs in other athletic activities too. Experts say it is the endorphins kicking in within our bodies that creates the great feeling.  Endorphins are like morphine which I've had after suffering the pain of a kidney stone.  With my first stone, after enduring two hours of excruciating pain...it was an unbelievable feeling as the morphine took hold....and I was grateful that I'd never been introduced to it on the streets outside the emergency room.  

Back in the pool, what also happens at the same time the endorphins are kicking in is that I get in a cadence...or flow.  A key element of lap swimming is getting in a rhythm of strokes and breathing.  If you're afraid of drowning...that becomes your focus...not the flow.  You've got to keep you face in the water and trust you will get the air you need...making friends with the water.  Once you do...there is a pace you fall into that feels again like you can go forever.  It's a part of the benefit that almost any exercise provides you.  Along with the physical benefits there are these psychological benefits too.  Staying in my tempo in the pool can be challenged.  Especially when some fit, young guy jumps into the lane next to me.  As he pulls up beside me I’ll begin to pour it on to beat him to the end of the pool.  I may win that lap but am out of the flow, breathing hard, sucking air.  Often, he's ten to twenty years’ younger which preserves my fragile ego to some degree.  I’ll then let him go on and get back into the rhythm on the next lap.

Welcome to life.  There is a rhythm and although there is a ‘universality’, we each much find our own.  I have on occasion woken, read my morning pages...meditated...had my Kona java and been in a good head space.  Then I jump in the car heading to the office attempting to merge with the rat race on the interstate.  Even though I hardly go two miles before getting off, there are enough crazy drivers to wrench me out of my place of serenity.  They are either the variety that stay in the right-hand lane...with four other lanes wide open...not letting me merge from the on ramp or they are driving along at 45-50 mph texting or talking on their cell.  Come on people!  There are others on the planet!  SHARE the road!  But, boom! And I'm out of my 'happy place'.  If you've noticed, most every day is like that in some way...there is a pace, a tempo within it all...but lots of other things are screaming at us to 'get with it'.  The frantic screaming, fast talking commercials we see cultivate 'You’re going to miss something', 'you need to grab the gusto', 'you deserve it'.  There are lots of half truths out there...claiming ultimate happiness and ecstasy via their product. All those people in the commercials are laughing and smiling having a great time—taking home a paycheck to be handsome and happy.  The people eating the fast food never get fat and those consuming all that alcohol never get plastered.  All the drug companies pushing pills for happiness never show the drug treatment centers that are making loads of money (I'm not totally 'anti' taking meds).  All we do has consequences, pleasant ones and not so pleasant ones.  Religion and society present us with rules and regulations to help...but we all are rule breakers.  As the Dali Lama has said ‘we need to learn the rules so that we can break the rules’.  Luckily you don't have to be a swimmer or runner to get it--- these experiences are just good object lessons.  Ebb and flow is throughout all creation…the lessons are there for us to hopefully 'get it'.  Daily we wake...then we sleep, some of us don't do too well with that cycle either.  At the gym, you learn you don't work out the same muscle group every day, one day you're on, the next you let them rest.

We can be slow learners and take several decades to pick up on this.  Spiritual teachers, mystics have said it for centuries.  Slow it down...merge but don't race, live in but not of, find your flow.  Now I often skip the interstate because of how it so quickly gets into me.  I’ll take side streets to work.  It's slower,…with lots more trees and beauty to catch my eye.  

Another thing, I’ve often advised clients to 'play your time card' when they feel pushed to make a decision yet they're unsure.  Rarely, unless someone is stepping out in front of a bus, do you ever have to make the decision right then…there’ll be another sale.  Play your time card...tell the person...tell your teen...tell your boss..."I'll get back with you".   Tell YOURSELF the same thing.  The space outside the flow is frantic, loud and chaotic.  Get a clue...peace is not to be found there.  I have no choice but to live amid ‘the world’ but I do have some choice about how much gets into me (unless monastic life is calling you but even there is no total escape).  So, let the guy in the car next to you go on...OR the guy in the next lane in the pool, Mike.  

Balance, the flow is the way to contentment...to finding health, serenity, God.  Although always present...God's not a screamer...but a gentleman, waiting his turn until we're ready to listen.  Sit, chill, play your time card...and be amazed.