Baloney Floater

There is floating, and then there is thinking you're floating.

When I say floating, I'm not talking about in water necessarily.  I mean moving from moment to moment, allowing life and change to happen.  Trying to enjoy it as opposed to resist every new thing thrown at you.

Alan Watts said, "When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do, you will sink and drown.  Instead you relax and float.  The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance."

I know, it sounds terrifying, doesn't it?  Not to everyone, but some of us think it sounds wretched.

I'm what I call a Baloney Floater.

Have you ever watched a child in a swim lesson learn to float on their back?  You know how the swim instructor has a hand under her back and says, "Relax, I've got you.  You're doing it."  But instead of lying flat on her back, the child is shaped like a round piece of fried baloney, curled down in the middle with every edge reaching up.  Her head is almost out of the water, neck craning to see her feet, fanny sinking, toes straining to hit the air to give herself the illusion of floating.  She has zero trust that lifeguard isn't going to move his hand, but maybe if enough body parts are above water, she can fool him and herself.

Like that child, I think I'm floating.  But then any little new plan, question, issue, event or change pops up and I feel everything in me clench and freak out.  That's how I find out I was fibbing to myself.  Really, I was floating with one eye on the next buoy, so when it's within reach, scramble onto it to wrap myself around it viciously until the next curve ball is thrown at me.

That kid isn't wrong to be nervous.  That lifeguard is probably a 15-year-old lifeguard who may move his hand at some point and say cheerfully, "See?!  I told you that you could float!"  And that child may not go back to the pool for a week.

But now we are grownups.  We don't have to trust Josh the lifeguard.

It's okay to try to float.
What do we have to lose?  This buoy clinging is exhausting anyway, right?
Uncurl those tight fingers, Honey.