Be Foolish...!

This is the story of how I made a complete fool of myself... well there are a lot of stories about that but we'll get to those later... and how I learnt that it is important to be a fool at times...

First... a sweeping statement... I absolutely love water (not just drinking and peeing)... I love the sea, I love swimming pools... I even love just sitting in the tub... So imagine how happy I was when I moved to Florida... No matter where I went, there was the ocean... So gorgeous, so calming... I loved it! There was only a tiny little problem... I didn't know how to swim at all. My mom says she took me for swimming classes when I was really small but I hated it... Yeah I think that one's made up... Thanks Mom..!

Not that I saw my inability as a problem, I didn't even care and it never stopped me from running into the waves or jumping into a pool. Fast forward to the summer of 2015 when my husband and I went for water sports in Keywest. Just to give a brief idea, there are these cruise companies that take you out on their boats to the middle of the ocean and you can take part in activities like snorkeling, parasailing, riding jet skis and so on. It was a really hot summer day and who wouldn't like to be in the cool ocean water? I was psyched... especially for the snorkeling because I would be trying it for the first time.

We went through all the training of how to put on the life vests and the tubes that go into the mouth and soon I was standing at the edge of the boat ready to go into the water. My husband, who had already done this trip before, had one piece of advice for me... "Whatever you do... do not let go of the rope"... So there I was about to go in... Laser focused on a rope which I could see bobbing in the water nearby... Sounds simple right? Well what I hadn't accounted for was the large number of Indians who were also in the same cruise group. We went into the water, I grabbed the rope, just about managing to keep my head above water and what do I see? Every inch of that rope was being held by an Indian. I understand, we come from a really crowded country…moving in crowds is probably our safety blanket. Naturally, the instructors were amused to see all these people hanging on to a rope for dear life. Just as I was about to relax and enjoy the water, I felt a tug and all of a sudden… my hands were no longer on my precious rope. There was a moment of clarity when I raised my arms and shouted “Help!” and then I was swallowing copious amounts of salt water. I’m thinking to myself… “Oh god… this is how it all ends” and flailing about in the water with my panicked husband beside me… The nearby instructor seems completely unfazed by all this and I’m thinking… “Isn’t this guy supposed to leap in and save me” (overdose of Baywatch I tell you)… Finally, after what seemed like ages, the instructor hands me a float and I get up on the boat again. Whew! I look around with new-found respect for life, after all I had just survived drowning and I run to my husband to hug him… and then the instructor says (really loudly)… “Yeah you had a life jacket on… you weren’t drowning… you did push a lot of the other people around…not cool”… I look down at my life jacket… look around to see some visibly angry Indians and for the rest of the trip… I was so mortified I stuck to my husband and didn't do anything crazy.

What did I learn from this really foolish and embarrassing experience?

• Do not try to jump into the middle of the ocean if you don’t know swimming. No matter how tempting it looks. If you still want to, wear a life jacket and more importantly, remember that you wore it.
•  Ropes are like comfort zones we have in life… We want to cling to them because they seem safe but sometimes life will just pull them away and we need to learn to live without them.
•  That day I made a fool of myself but there was something good that came out of it… I finally acknowledged that I needed to learn swimming and started taking some lessons for it. Of course there is still a long way to go before I become an accomplished swimmer but at least it’s a start. That’s the way it works in life as well… Sometimes we need to go out and do those foolish things and be embarrassed to push us to learn something new or to do something better. 

Be foolish… be embarrassed… be better than what you are today… !