Errr... Swimming. Anyone?

I was sitting idle, doing nothing (as usual) when suddenly those images entered in mind.

I used to be a small kid (sic!) when I first entered a swimming pool.
With fear and anticipation, I let go of the ladders and I was there alone and completely on my own.
The instructor asked me to float and in I went. For a moment everything went berserk. I couldn't understand which way was up and which way was down. I didn't know at what angle I lay with respect to the Mother Earth. All I knew was that I was lost and I had to somehow survive. And so did I.

First lesson learnt, I was soon the king of shallow waters (thanks to floor of the pool which was just 3 feet below and easily within my reach). A friend tried to test me and dragged me into deep waters. I fought for some time and again came out, with a fist in the air.

So there I was, the king (with all due respect to HANce King) of all waters (or good times?) - be it shallow or deep.

Now starts the funny part.
Somehow, I am able to correlate the experience I had while learning swimming to that of life in general -

We leave the safe environment we grow up in, start the lonely battle, don't know which way we should head and most importantly don't know where we stand.

Slowly, every thing sinks in and we find ourselves in peace with our environment. Just to be reminded by a jolt that there are still much deeper waters to be conquered. We take a deep breath and start our journey for survival (or at least that's what people make us believe). And at the end come out victorious.

But we never ventured out of the pool. Only the size of the pool changed. We never took on the waves that hit hard on the shore. We never tried to swim across a wild river.

So, does that mean that life will also follow a similar track. We'll look for challenges but within what we describe as risk-free-environment. We'll never act wild and act as if we don't have anything to loose. We'll always have something pulling us indoors.

Think about it.

Next Up - Life and how it relates to the art of motorcycling :D

p.s. am I quitting my job? naaaah.... am too lazy for that :P