If you are drowning

It might be time to stop swimming and just float

I’ve sat here for nearly two hours watching the curser flicker on my screen. One of my sons is having a coughing fit in his bedroom and our recently skunked dog still smells despite multiple baths. I can’t think straight. My mind is seeking distraction.

I feel a sense of obligation to write something deep and meaningful, yet I’ve erased and rewritten the opening paragraph three times already. I’ve twiddled with titles like, “Zero views and the locus of control” or “A Love Letter to My Nervous System.” Truth be told, I don’t really have the desire to share today. I don’t have anything to say.

How do you show up when your energy is blocked or low?

In the past, I would have forced a blog out of myself. Maybe repurposed something from an old Instagram post. Or I would have sifted through the collection of random sentences and paragraphs that I collect in my phone notes under the title “Leftovers”. I would have forced it because that is what I do best: I force and control.

When my son was first learning to swim, I tried to teach him how to float on his back in the bathtub. It’s much easier to get the shampoo out and he often acts as though we’re pouring hot acid on him when we try to rinse his hair, so I figured this could be a more peaceful solution.

Photo by MART PRODUCTION

For years, he refused to do it. He couldn’t just lie back and trust I was holding him. He kept trying to sit up, and every time he did that, his bottom would become the heaviest point and he would start to sink. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. He was terrified of sinking, so he would fight floating, and end up sinking even faster.

I struggle to let go and trust, too.

The past few months, I’ve been taking one self-discovery course after another. I’m treating my studies like I’m in a personal development PHD program. I spend hours a day free-diving into my psyche. I’m reaching depths I’ve never reached before, but the second I try to push myself further than I am ready to go, I start to panic and have to kick my way back to the surface.

You shouldn’t force healing, just as you shouldn’t swim against the tide.

The number one advice in ocean safety is to never try to swim against a rip current. It seems counterintuitive in the moment. We are being pulled from where we think we will be safest (the shore, comfortable patterns, old relationships). We start fighting like hell to get back there, but instead of saving ourselves we just increase our risk for drowning.

What if we learned to float and let go? What if on the days we don’t feel like producing, we could take the pressure off and shift toward taking in information, rather than pumping it out?

Maybe the only risk factor in our drowning is our own approach. Maybe we’re unnecessarily fighting against an invisible tide and if we learned to trust, it would take us exactly where we need to go.

Maybe you’re not drowning; it’s just time to stop swimming and float.