Riding Emotional Tides
I am a famously terrible swimmer. Somewhere, hopefully never to be found, there is a home video of me in a speedo and floaties having a temper tantrum about jumping into the deep end of the pool and getting my head wet.
So it makes complete sense that I now live in a Mexican beach town, and make the quick 7min from my apartment to work through this childhood trauma in the clear blue waters of the pacific ocean. Who knew healing your inner child could be so fun?
However, the Pacific ocean is not the deep end of my neighborhood pool. And while I may not need floaties anymore, I am still not the strongest swimmer out there. And two weeks ago, as I was enjoying a nice Saturday morning swim, I got caught in a rip current. There have been a record number of drownings this season, and I had recently seen someone go under right in front of me, with the lifeguard running in to try and save him. But unfortunately, he could not.
Most drownings don’t occur because the rip current is so strong that it takes people out to sea and they can’t make it back ashore. And the rip current usually doesn’t pull you under. A rip current is natural, when the waves break on the shore they also have to recede back. Panic and the accompanying exhaustion are usually the culprits of drowning. The swimmer feels the tug of the rip current and they panic, feverishly trying to swim headlong into it, until they reach exhaustion. The best way out of a rip current is to let it take you out and then calmly and slowly swim at an angle to the left or right, and then you are back in calmer waters.
Even though I knew all this, and have been stuck in rip currents in the past, I still panicked and started to exhaust myself as I felt the tide pulling me further and further from the beach. However, I caught myself early, and was able to calm myself down and stopped swimming against the current, and eventually made it back to shore with no harm, just mildly out of breath.
Our emotions are like the currents of the ocean. We do not choose them, we cannot control them and often, they change in a moment's notice. Our emotions, like the tides, are controlled by a much greater force. We are simply the conduits through which they move.
The more we try to push down our emotions, the stronger they become, until eventually swallowing us whole. We cannot choose who we love or for how long, we did not choose that we might become angry at the drop of a hat, or are sad and on the verge of tears when we hear our favorite song. We cannot choose why or how certain things make us anxious, scared, depressed or even happy. But we can choose how we relate to them.
When we get swept up in currents of shame and unworthiness it is best not to swim against them, we must learn to relax into them, and let them run their course, before calmly swimming out of it. When we feel the tides of a depressive episode begin to shift, trying to feverishly clean and organize ourselves out of it only leads to it lingering longer. This takes practice.
Our emotions are messengers from the divine, a sign from mother nature that something is changing, that something is moving. A reminder that we are alive and a part of something much greater than our own neurosis and delusion. A reminder that life is a current, moving through us at all times. Maybe our emotions are remnants of a past storm, or a ripple effect from a storm far far away. Either way, our emotions will go just as they came, in their own time. When we fight them, or avoid them altogether, that is when they cause the most damage. When we relate to them with clarity and calmness, they tend to not destroy us. And in our best moments, we can even relate to our emotions with playfulness, compassion and joy, perhaps even learning something. When we relate to the ocean like this, we learn to surf, snorkel and splash.
When we experience strong emotions it means that we are alive. It means that we are engaged in life. It means we have an opportunity to grow and learn and experience joy. Or we can let them ruin our day, or react to them and yell at our spouse. Or we can numb them with drugs and alcohol. Either way, the choice is ours.
—————
Photo by Emiliano Arano: https://www.pexels.com/photo/waves-crashing-on-shore-14751450/
