Part 2: The Physics of the Rise

As I re-read my thoughts from Power in Depth, I began to wonder about the mechanics of how we actually stay there safely. What happens when the “middle ground” stops feeling like a waiting room and starts feeling like its own destination?

I am reminded of a story my aunt told me before she passed.

She was swimming across a lake, a distance she believed she could master. Halfway through, the shore began to feel farther away than her strength could reach. Fatigue turned into struggle; struggle turned into panic. And in the logic of the panicked mind, the only solution is to fight harder.

But the harder she fought the water, the faster the water claimed her. She began to sink.

As she went under, losing breath and drifting toward unconsciousness, the “movie reel” of her life began to play. The fight was over because there was nothing left to fight with. She finally, completely, stopped resisting.

And that is when she rose.

I couldn’t help but think of myself. The way I fight to determine my path, my direction, my next steps. The way I try to assign meaning to everything as if clarity must be earned through effort. I’m not sure whether this conditioning is universal or uniquely mine, but it has been hard to release the belief that rising is an act of will, a muscular, aggressive ascent.

It’s a knee-jerk response to claw for the surface, to climb the water like a ladder.

But my aunt’s experience suggests a different physics. She didn’t swim to the surface; the surface claimed her the moment she became still enough to be buoyant.

In this middle ground of my own life, I realize I have been braced for a struggle. I have been treading water with a frantic, invisible effort, terrified that if I stop “processing” or “healing” or “figuring it out,” I will disappear into the dark. I’ve been treating my growth like a marathon swim, measuring the distance to a shore I’m not even sure I want to land on yet.

To the Siren, the water is not an enemy to be conquered; it is the medium that holds her.

If I carry my aunt’s lesson into this space, buoyancy becomes my new home frequency. It is the acceptance that I don’t have to solve my grief or fix my survival reflexes in order to stay afloat. I only have to stop fighting the fact that they exist.

When we stop resisting the bruise, the longing, the fear, we become less dense. We take up our full space. We allow our lungs to fill with the truth of just this, just now, and suddenly the water itself pushes us upward.

I hate that saying, the one that claims that as soon as you stop looking, the very thing you’re searching for appears. And yet, perhaps there is a truth there I’ve resisted, not because I don’t understand it, but because I’ve been afraid of what happens when I stop trying to decide what things mean.

My aunt saw her life’s “movie reel” not at the finish line, but in the depths. So, perhaps the clarity we seek isn’t waiting for us on the shore. Perhaps the most honest data, the truest record of who we are, is only visible when we are deep enough to have let go of the struggle, but present enough to keep our eyes open.

To stop looking doesn’t mean giving up. It looks like no longer scanning the horizon for the storm, or even scanning for the shore.

I am practicing the stillness of the mid-lake. I am trusting that the same water that feels like a weight is also the thing that will carry me to the surface, provided I am brave enough to stop trying to save myself.

Always,
Your Trusted Friend ❤