I know a woman and her husband who have reminded me of the importance of getting back on the diving board.
“There was still the serpent whispering…..’Taste and be as Gods.’ But neither infinite power nor infinite wisdom could bestow godhood upon man. For that there would have to be infinite love as well.” A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr
As I am not yet ready to get another dog, today I tried out volunteering for a dog rescue organization that was doing a Meet Some of Our Lovable Dogs Who Need Good Homes event in one of those big box pet supply stores. While hanging out near the front of the store with one of the Lovable Dog Who Needs a Good Home (who by the way was truly a Lovable Dog Who Needs a Good Home if anyone is interested: https://ophrescue.org/) I encountered a woman who was juggling an infant in its infant-sized space capsule, a medium sized dog who was Super Excited(!) about this field trip, and a large purse that appeared to also be Super Excited(!) about this field trip, as she tried to separate a shopping cart that was tightly snuggled with its fellow shopping carts. I helped her get a cart and made sure she was safely off on her pet supply shopping adventure. Random act of kindness in a big box pet supply store: Check!
Despite having completed the legendary quest of moving the Close-Family-Member-Who-Has-Alzheimer’s disease to a situation much better prepared to deal with her worsening status and growing care needs (See “Ouch” and “An Epic Tale”), my stress level has continued to be extremely high. I can easily generate an impressive list of reasons for this, but I could also tell that there were underlying reasons that did not immediately shout out their names when the roll call of likely suspects was performed. I blame random acts of kindness for the loss of the blissful ability to ignore any signals from the Deep indicating there were reasons to listen more closely when searching for explanations. Stupid RAK.
But there those signals from the Deep were, so listen I did. It turns out a key source of this extremely high stress was this situation required that I needed to rely on others, in this case the staff at this facility. How can I know the staff is doing what they say they are doing? How can I know they are truly trained and skilled enough to handle the current level of (hopefully temporary) psychosis and cognitive impairment? How can I know they won’t fail me, abandon me, leave me to try to pick up the pieces in a tidal wave of crisis? Yes, I know these thoughts quickly escalate up the crazy spectrum, and there they are and my knowing they quickly move toward irrational does not stop them from being there.
I suspect most of us have had things happen in our histories that lead us to draw a line in the sand marking how far we go with trusting others, often for solid reasons, even if staying on this side of the line closes our horizons and shrinks our world. Some of us develop the skills to venture beyond that line, many of us don’t. I could be wrong, but I think most of the people in my life, even those I am quite close to, would be surprised that trusting others is such a big challenge for me. I think I come across as open and trusting, and in many ways I am, and there is a wall that has historically been nearly impossible to get beyond. I have been working on changing that, becoming one of those people who boldly ventures beyond the line in the sand. It is really hard. Perhaps the following story will help us both understand why it is so difficult:
I started swimming competitively when I was like 6-years-old and continued through high school. I could have continued to swim in college but by that point in my life the path I was on had taken some strange turns so I didn’t. I was a decent competitor, but not great (which is pretty much the story of all my athletic activities). Some time late middle school/early high school I started to play around with springboard diving, again decent but not great. One day I was learning a new dive on the 3-meter board (the dreaded “high dive” our youth). I had performed all the preliminary pieces off the board. My coach and I had walked through putting the pieces together on the deck. I climbed the ladder, stood on the board, thinking the steps through in my head, started my approach, made my jump-step, started my dive at the peak of the arc as the board tossed me into space. Somewhere as I folded and unfolded, twisted and spun, I made a mistake. I opened up not as a knife edge slicing through the surface of the water, but as a full belly flop, every inch of the front of my body landing flat on the surface. Had the point of the dive been to complete a full belly flop, I would have received high scores from all judges. Sadly, that was not the point of the dive.
If you have never had the opportunity to experience the sensation of a full belly flop from a height of more than 3 meters, I will share with you that it is quite painful. I paused before surfacing and swimming to the side of the pool to assess my choices. Getting out of the pool and trying the dive again pretty much seemed to be the only option, what with my coach and other divers, etc., standing around waiting for me to get out of the water. I climbed out, the front part of my body now lobster red. My coach and I made a few jokes, I headed back to the board, climbed the ladder, and dove….with the exact same result.
This time I stayed under the water for a longer period of time while my body communicated in an extremely direct fashion about the consequences of falling from that height and landing on a substance that had the surface tension of water with the full surface area of the front of my body. As I climbed out, I noticed my coach had stripped down to his swimsuit and had a look in his eye like he was getting ready to go in after me. Meanwhile, additional people were starting to gather near the diving area. My guess is the loud crack my body made as it encountered the water in a full belly flop had attracted curious onlookers. As fate would have it, some of these curious onlookers were attractive girls that I knew. Keeping in mind that I was a young adolescent male with all the glorious insecurities that come with that, the stakes were now significantly raised. Far too cool to let on how much pain I was in, or to make eye contact with the ladies (Attractive girls? Huh, didn’t even notice them), of course I headed for the board.
I climbed the ladder, prepared myself, started forward with my approach, and my body froze. My brain watched this happen and at first couldn’t do anything to change this unexpected rebellion by my physical self. Then, with great effort, I took another step forward. My body started to shake, I began to cry and I could move no further on the board. I had to climb down the ladder, left the pool in tears. Given that I am now such a well-educated smarty-boots, I know what happened was I had a panic attack. At the time I didn’t know what had happened, I was humiliated, confused and still in pain due to the physics of flesh and water. I was never again a decent but not great spring board diver, because I stopped diving.
Our interactions with our Fellow Humans are filled with so many chances for missteps while attempting aerobatic maneuvers from the high dive. We open up and find ourselves in the wrong space, smack! Pretty much all of us get hurt in relationships. Sometimes it is a sting, sometimes it is the kind of injury that makes your coach wonder if they are going to need to pull you out of the pool. Sometimes you get really, really hurt by the people who are supposed to most look out for you and care for you and love you and provide you with a safe place to be you. Full on belly flop from the high dive. It is easy for our hearts to learn to simply say fuck that. No more climbing the ladder to the high dive.
Relationships are such a crucial part of finding our way toward that…..that something which allows us to become our best selves, to find meaning in all the complicated goo. And we get hurt in relationships. Our evolutionary history has mechanisms to protect us from pain, physical or emotional. One key tool is our body stepping in and taking control when it decides we are being too stupid to be left in charge (Body to Brain: Freeze, sucker! Nobody move and no one gets hurt!). Another key tool our history as a species brings is Avoidance. Seems to make a lot of sense, right? Stay away from things that cause pain. Simple. Done. Well, that was easy…. Except avoidance of relationships means isolation from the source of something crucial and makes our fear of being hurt even worse, not better. Oh, crap. Well, this sucks…….
We are left struggling between wanting the intimacy of others and wanting to not get hurt. We try to play it both ways; having relationships but staying curled up (you might make a huge mess splashing others with a cannonball all curled up but you won’t belly flop). But is that really having a relationship? Really a way to get access to all those marvelous connections and prizes that are sort of the whole point of having relationships?
If avoidance actually makes our fears worse and trying to both be in relationships while staying safely unopened doesn’t seem like it would lead to relationships that nurture and feed us, where does that leave us? How do you get back into the trust pool when you belly flopped from the high dive? How do you walk out on that board 3 meters above the water when every neuron is on red alert and screaming, “Stop him! Abort, abort!! He can’t be trusted to drive this body. Stick a wrench into the spokes of the motor neurons. Lock those muscles down!!”
What are we supposed to do when two crucial aspects of our evolutionary history, our very ability to survive as a species, let alone our own efforts to not get eaten by fierce-some beasts are at odds with each other? As always we have a choice (There is always some damn hippie, sucky choice). Climb down the ladder, walk away, hoping not too many people see you in your tearful retreat, stop trying to be a decent but not great diver (Yea! Yes, let’s do that). Or (here is that sucky “OR”) you can stand there on the board until the shaking stops, then inch forward, repeat until your toes find the end of the board and then jump. It doesn’t have to be a 1&1/2 in the pike position with a full twist. You get full credit for simply jumping off the high dive.
In looking back over this post, I doubt any of this helps. Except for maybe if you find yourself frozen on the high dive with the cool kids watching you, looking down into the relationship pool, know that you are not alone. At least I have been there even if it is only you & me.