Damn, I wasted countless days sitting in my recliner chair--NOT GETTING IN THE WATER--feeling sorry for myself with my perennial antagonist: pain.
No, I have not had the gene of self-pity excised by "Ancestry" or "23 and Me."
This parasite has accompanied me in this life. But I have had my periods of time when I can locate the kernel of self-motivation hidden latent deep within my soul.
The motivation is unearthed by fleeting physical pain, exhaustion, extremes of cold, and physical danger...the physical challenges that one lives in a young life, and throughout a life if a person is quite special, like Socrates, who propounded his idea of living a Stoic life in his Classical Greek age. I am not such a Stoic; perhaps I tasted a few years of that as a young man, without realizing the importance of it.
Wait! Isn't this a blog of swimming?
This was yesterday:
This was me yesterday:
Fourteen years ago, this was me:
Not the build of a swimmer; I'm more of a plodder. I haven't been able to freestyle after 2 cervical surgeries, but...maybe...who ever knows.
Yesterday the Harbor Beach was rough, surging 2-5 foot waves without much of an interval to recover between waves. I was unable to get to the big waves, much less through them and out past them, which is typically my goal.
I had 15 minutes of difficult, chilly fun in my Churchill fins. My lumbar is holding up well today. Fingers crossed.
Surfers KNOW the secret of life. Cold salt water striving to achieve the adrenaline pump of speed and power. I envy them.
