Being Foolish or How I Learned to Dive
Also, a new program at City of Asylum featuring New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv
A quick note on this newsletter’s schedule. Due to vacations, my daughter Sophia moving to Indianapolis, etc, the schedule for this newsletter went wonky. I’d like to get back to sending one out every 2-weeks, but the schedule may stay wonky as I have pieces published in other outlets and turn them into newsletters. My hope is that whenever the newsletter pops up in your inbox, you’re happy to see it.
I Decided to Learn to Dive
People who know me well know I love a learning curve, in some ways the steeper the better. I also enjoy challenges and learning new things. So, I was lap swimming one day a few months ago and thought about how I never really learned how to dive—not properly—back when I took the required all-school swimming lessons in 4th grade (wearing truly ghastly uniform swimsuits, but that’s a different topic for another day.) It occurred to me that they offer adult swim lessons at the YMCA where I’m a member. Wondering if they could teach me, I asked the Aquatics Director about diving lessons. He said they could definitely show me how to dive and described it as “easy.” OK, then.
Diving, it turns out, is not that hard to learn, but it took me a few lessons to get the hang of it. Alex, the very patient lifeguard who taught me, showed me how to dive, then watched me while I attempted different dives and gave great explanations of what I need to tweak in order to make my dives look like dives and not, well, belly flops. We started with me sitting on the side of the pool and bending over the water in a dive formation, kind of like a tipped teapot. Next I stood on the edge of the pool and did the same thing. He talked to me about how to best use my back foot and my arms and then had me move up onto the block, which made me feel like a real swimmer (and diver).
Before I started the lessons I shared with him my fear of diving, because that’s what my inability to dive came down to—I was afraid. Afraid of what, I’m not quite sure. Since I swim a fair amount for exercise I can’t say I’m afraid of the water. But something about going into the pool headfirst felt paralyzing. A few years before I’d learned how to do flip turns off the pool wall, not by conquering my fear of getting a noseful of water, but by getting water up my nose over and over again until I got good enough at the flip turns that it didn’t happen (don’t breathe in when flipping!). This fear of diving, though, was different. It felt irrational, phobia-like. After all, I was diving into a swimming pool with a certified lifeguard watching everything I did. What was there to be afraid of?
I told Alex that I understood that my fear of water was irrational, and to my surprise he forcefully disagreed with me. He insisted that any fear of water should be respected because water can be dangerous. He also said that the deep end at the YMCA was less deep than a lot of pools, and that can be scary when diving. With that explanation, I understood my fear of diving as not unreasonable and also not necessarily in conflict with my love of swimming. That is, love of water, and fear of water may not be mutually exclusive, which seems strange, but for me now makes sense.
The bigger problem I had with diving, though, is that I wasn’t that good at it. Maybe no one is when they are essentially a novice, but despite Alex’s encouragement and helpful explanations, I wasn’t putting all the pieces together as quickly as I would have liked, and at another time of my life I would have grown impatient with myself for not mastering this skill faster. However, Alex’s easy smile and encouraging attitude led to a change within myself, especially after he told me, “Don’t be afraid to fail—just keep trying.” I took that message to heart and added my own twist: Be foolish.
It probably says something about me that I would equate being bad at something I never properly learned how to do with foolishness, but that’s actually not what I meant when I encouraged myself to “Be foolish!” I meant: be bad at this, keep failing, belly flop, flail around. In other words, don’t worry about succeeding, just keep trying. And that’s what I did. I kept trying after our lesson ended and during my lap swims. I tried so much and so hard that I bruised the tops of my thighs! Apparently that can happen. The bruises didn’t hurt, but they looked terrible. To work hard enough at something that I bruised myself seems, viewed one way, the height of foolishness, to which I say, “Yes!” because I was enjoying the learning, the failing, the flailing, the trying over and over again. I didn't like how the bruises looked, but they were incontrovertible proof of my willingness to be foolish.
And, after some weeks of foolishness, I pulled off a few real dives. I did it. I had learned how. I doubt I can consistently dive well at this point, and I need to start practicing again, but I have the satisfaction of knowing my willingness to fail, and try again, and again, and again, yielded results in the end.
I also know that this whole experience was crucial for helping me make progress on my book proposal. Suddenly I understood that I could try and fail, be foolish—that a willingness to be foolish might even be necessary for figuring out my next book, in the Steve Jobs sense of being hungry and foolish as a way of keeping one’s creative edge. That’s the kind of foolishness I’m talking about, a foolishness that requires bravery to discover a new, more personal definition of success.
Rachel Aviv at City of Asylum Sept. 26
Please join me, Tuesday, September 26 at 7pm Eastern, either in person in Pittsburgh, or virtually, for the Healthcare and Humanity Reading Series at City of Asylum. Best-selling author and New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv will discuss her book Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us. The book is a profound exploration of how psychiatric diagnoses shape patients’ sense of who they are, for better and for worse. As Aviv writes, “There are stories that save us, and stories that trap us, and in the midst of an illness it can be very hard to know which is which.”
Read more about Aviv’s book and sign up to attend the reading Here at City of Asylum.
A reminder that the event is Tuesday, September 26 at 7pm.
As we come to the close of summer, I encourage each of you to find a bit of foolishness in your lives. Who knows where it might lead…
And enjoy these last dog days of summer! With hugs—
Theresa
Your experience with learning how to dive reminds us to think outside of the box. Trying new things is a path for us to grow and heal. A girl I grew up with came across me singing in the hallway of our junior high school. I was destroying the tune I was attempting to sing. Her statement to me was "you only have one life to make a fool of yourself, so do it right!" She then assisted me in finishing the song. It is true, it is freeing to be foolish! Best wishes on your diving skills. I swim once a week and cam relate to the therapy that being in water brings.
Congratulations, Theresa on learning to dive! Thank you for sharing your experience and all of the feelings that went with it. I just thought I would take this opportunity to mention and commend the YMCA. They offer, free of charge, a wonderful strengthening and fitness program for cancer survivors. You don't have to be a member to take part in this 12-week program. You also get to meet and share experiences with other survivors. It is a wonderful and uplifting program. During covid I was lucky enough to be able to do the program over zoom with my sister who is a certified Livestrong instructor. This past year I was able to do the program in person at my local Y. It is something cancer survivors should be aware of.