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A miscommunication regarding a deadline has given me great stress. (I thought I'd filled it: the department thinks otherwise. I await Monday to discuss it in more detail.)
In the meantime, I'm procrastinating my other work - if I'm being honest, I was far too sleepy to do much today - and thinking. There are a number of things that strike me as worth thought, lately: grace, and gratitude, and the nature of friendship, and mindfulness.
I've been thinking about diving a lot, lately, and not just because of the memory it brings of being in a pleasant warm climate. I've been thinking about how it's like and unlike climbing. It requires perfect mindfulness. You can't come to it with preoccupation, with a mind on other things. It requires calmness, and patience. You can't move abruptly underwater: all the dynamics of moving in air and gravity are altered by buoyancy, by the need to remain aware of the tank and BCD and flippers which keep you alive. You control your buoyancy with your breath, once you achieve neutral buoyancy with the BCD: inhaling makes you rise, exhaling makes you sink. Every movement takes thought; control: you must know what you mean to achieve, and approach the process of doing so with every step in hand. In diving, adrenaline is not your friend.
It's not like climbing, where every moment balances the tension between gravity and strength, technique and friction; between aspiration and ability, adrenaline and fatigue. Climbing is a test of skill, endurance, intelligence. It's a challenge, almost a fight: you against the wall, you against the world, you against gravity, held up by a rope and a friend and the strength and speed of your reaching fingers. The pain and the strain and the stomach-tightening surge of fear on a lead just outside your ability is the price you pay for the moment of flying, where strength and technique and reach and balance just click, where body and mind feel smooth and complete and right, for the rush of satisfaction that comes with finishing something you thought was beyond you.
And yet, to me, the two are very alike. They both require absolute commitment to the moment, to the act as the end in itself, to the joy of doing a thing for its own sake. To a clarity of focus I have never found anywhere else, however much I may seek.
(One day, I will be able to go diving any time I want. Well, I can hope, can't I?)
In the meantime, I'm procrastinating my other work - if I'm being honest, I was far too sleepy to do much today - and thinking. There are a number of things that strike me as worth thought, lately: grace, and gratitude, and the nature of friendship, and mindfulness.
I've been thinking about diving a lot, lately, and not just because of the memory it brings of being in a pleasant warm climate. I've been thinking about how it's like and unlike climbing. It requires perfect mindfulness. You can't come to it with preoccupation, with a mind on other things. It requires calmness, and patience. You can't move abruptly underwater: all the dynamics of moving in air and gravity are altered by buoyancy, by the need to remain aware of the tank and BCD and flippers which keep you alive. You control your buoyancy with your breath, once you achieve neutral buoyancy with the BCD: inhaling makes you rise, exhaling makes you sink. Every movement takes thought; control: you must know what you mean to achieve, and approach the process of doing so with every step in hand. In diving, adrenaline is not your friend.
It's not like climbing, where every moment balances the tension between gravity and strength, technique and friction; between aspiration and ability, adrenaline and fatigue. Climbing is a test of skill, endurance, intelligence. It's a challenge, almost a fight: you against the wall, you against the world, you against gravity, held up by a rope and a friend and the strength and speed of your reaching fingers. The pain and the strain and the stomach-tightening surge of fear on a lead just outside your ability is the price you pay for the moment of flying, where strength and technique and reach and balance just click, where body and mind feel smooth and complete and right, for the rush of satisfaction that comes with finishing something you thought was beyond you.
And yet, to me, the two are very alike. They both require absolute commitment to the moment, to the act as the end in itself, to the joy of doing a thing for its own sake. To a clarity of focus I have never found anywhere else, however much I may seek.
(One day, I will be able to go diving any time I want. Well, I can hope, can't I?)
