Trees and Plants and Things

If you haven't noticed by now, the titles rarely have anything to do with the posts.

So that's why I'm gonna talk about diving boards. And things I've learned while watching them.

Group the First is the little kids. They're tiny, energetic, never standing still in line, they all kind of look like they have to pee because they're so excited they're going to get to jump off again. They're totally in their own world, like hamsters on an exercise wheel. You can stand and stare at them while they perform this ritual again and again and they'll never look at you back. That's what makes them so fun to watch. You know they don't care about anyone else at the pool. They just want to jump off the board, paddle over to the ladder as fast as possible, and jump off again. The only thing they're concerned with is the sensation of the jump. They barely move the board at all but those precious tenths of a second where they are in total free-fall followed by the rush of the water as it swallows them whole has got to be sending off all types of crazy reactions in their brains. It's a pure adrenaline rush from the moment they're sprinting down the board to when they jump and they're above everything and everyone and there's a momentary jolt of fear as they begin to fall that shoots up to some crazy stratospheric level when they land in the water and now they're in this whole new medium. They can move and turn in any direction and the only limit, a beautiful limit, is how long they can stand without releasing the air from their tiny lungs. You can just tell from watching them that it's a death-defying, exhilarating, euphoric experience.

The second group is the inbetween-ers. This is the worst group to watch. It's the teenagers/ older kids who have clearly gotten over the sensation of the jumping and the falling and the swimming but they aren't brave enough to do anything but jump in. Some of them can dive or flip but they're just too inbetween to be interesting. They're aware of their friends and the people there and you can see them looking around and watching everyone else. It's not that they aren't having fun, it's just that the rush has mellowed for them and it seems like they're just kind of going off out of habit. They're progressing in small amounts but they don't have the confidence to create something like the third group.

The third group are the guys who make the diving board something to watch. Usually it's the deeply-tanned guys, probably muscular, they wait in line like they own the place. You can always tell when they know they're good. They have the confidence and control to know that they're going to do something that will simultaneously inspire and intimidate everyone watching. And they know people are watching, they want people to watch.  It's magic, in a way. When you see a guy step up to the board, take a hop and put all of his weight down to send himself skyward in a beautiful arc as he corkscrews three times in the air before cleanly diving down into the water with only a minute splash, the perfect underscore to the brief aerial miracle you've just witnessed. When you see it, you almost can't believe that it came from anywhere. There's no way this guy could've learned it. He couldn't have ever struggled with it at any point in his life. One moment, he was a crying baby. The next day, he was a full-formed man who could jump off a diving board like nobody's business.

But I think that's the whole "secret". As a runner, I think I'm at about the level of diving-board guy. I can impress the people who show up at whatever local event and don't really follow professionals. But before a race I never act like I'm going to win it or impress anyone. I've usually got my head down, not making eye-contact with anyone, off by myself staring at my shoes, wondering how I'm going to mess up. But that's such a weenie, inbetween-er way to handle things. Yeah, sometimes you're going to mess up and burn-out in a race or belly-flop in the pool. But you're never going to do anything if you don't act like you can already do something impressive. That's the energy and the confidence and the excitement of creation.

Because let's face it, most everything is a whole lot of nothing. It's empty. A track is a track. A diving board is a diving board. A blog is a blog. There's nothing inherently amazing about any of it. It's people who make it exciting. It's people who take this nothing and turn it into something incredible and memorable and sacred. And the miracle is they produce it out of nowhere. It comes from somewhere deep down, from trials and pain and a hard-fought sense of self and control to take this nothingness and put in that surge of energy that the little kids are getting high as a kite off of and turn it into a balanced, beautiful, elegant display. That's the whole transcendence part.

And that's probably worth being excited about.