
The phrase 'no fight left in me' recently struck me as lacking meaning. To fight, to struggle, to confront, to act against -- as if it is all there is to life, as if it makes people 'succeed'.
Swimming has taught me something different. Swimming has taught me to be calm. To accept, to listen, to see and to find a way. To not create splashes that are bound to make you sink, to not fight but to allow things to happen and enter what surrounds you. To be tense is to try forcing your way, to be tense is to die.
“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. - Bruce Lee
And in those things that are disclosed, there are ways far beyond what a closed mind can imagine. To be assertive is lauded in our society but it also means to be rigid and deaf to outward things.
"It's dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you're feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig........ Lightly, lightly – it's the best advice ever given me... So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly." - Aldous Huxley
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