Float

the REST of the week #139

It’s the rest of the week and the beginning of the year--time for the survival float.

Photo by Ben Koorengevel on Unsplash

The new year offers an opportunity to refresh the page—which, of course, is not the same as getting a blank page in a new document, because the words are still there. I still have my cough, we still have the to dos, and the unanswered questions hanging in the air have not disappeared.

We carry our same thoughts, ideas, beliefs, hopes, fear, dreams, and all in us, into this next segment of time marked off as 2025.

Even if all is calm and bright in the afterglow of holiday cheer, you’re been here before and are well aware that the storms can whip up quick and hard. Also that sink-or-swim mode can get exhausting.

Have you ever taken swimming classes? Did they teach you the survival float? Perhaps you remember how difficult it was to let go and float when every instinct is rallying to keep you from sinking?

“The key to a successful, life-saving survival float,” our instructor told us, “is relaxing your body and drawing in a deep breath.”

It feels quite counterintuitive to stop kicking and thrashing abount, to tilt your head back until the waterline frames your face and the fluid wetness cradles your head. But, you discover that pushing gently against the water with your extremities and then letting them hang limp as you inhale and hold your breath, lifts your chest and turns you into a living buoy. Your legs will likely begin to drift down, but then you just push-relax-take another breath again.

Idealism aside, we know that, whether swimming or living, this does not come naturally. Flailing about and grasping for something to hang on to is an instinctive response against drowning.

But this is not what helps us stay afloat. That is not what saves us.

So what would happen if we pause more this year—if, when the water gets deep and we get tired, we look up, push away from the waters, take a deep breath, and… float on them?

What would it feel like to resist the urge to clutch the nearest support (people/places/things) and to experiment with letting our weight settle into the waters while we discover the buoyancy available in a deep breath and in letting go of tension and the sense that it is all on use to thrash our way to safety/achievement/success?

What would you like to rest from right now?

Here’s to more floating. May your rest be sweet,

Alicia