Just Keep Swimming 26 January 2013

 

Dory: Hey there, Mr. Grumpy Gills. When life gets you down do you wanna know what you've gotta do?
Marlin: No I don't wanna know.
Dory: [singing] Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we do? We swim, swim.
Marlin: Dory, no singing.
Dory: [continuing] Ha, ha, ha, ha, ho. I love to swim. When you want to swim you want to swim. 

Now, this may have been swimming, hah, in my head today because I have the privilege of working with a boy who loves this movie, or because I too am guilty of loving this gem from Pixar, watching many times when it came out. But this snippet also has truth for today. It has been a topsy turvy month…being sick for a week, getting a new job sorted out, and yes, still processing. I have had days where I have had to remind myself to keep swimming, to know that there are concrete aspects of life that are currently obscured by fog. I have to be brave enough to swim in the darkness, to keep fighting for joy, perspective, humbly walking this journey. It hasn’t been easy. All too easily I’m like Marlin—fearful, rationalizing, and frankly, “I don’t want to know” the next steps to take or to be told to move on. 

To draw from another animated analogy, “ogres (and processing time abroad as well as the death of many friends and family) are like onions”.  They have layers, make you cry, sting, and yet are so necessary for life—giving it fuller flavor because we appreciate peaks and valleys, happiness and sadness, when we have lived through each of them; fully grasping the one because of the reality of its “antithesis” if you will. Thankfully, we don’t experience the full extreme of only happiness or sadness—because as humans there is always something to be happy or grateful for even in the midst of grief.

You have to choose to keep swimming. Even though I can’t force the fog to go away, or always anticipate the memories each day will bring, I can choose to keep going. I can commit to walk this journey of grief, processing, and gleaning direction from the past year.

“When you want to swim you want to swim”—akin to “fake it ‘til you make it” but I think there’s something to say for fighting for something until you want it. It may be tedious but there is purpose in trudging on in habits and trusting there will be fruit at the end. Now, the end is somewhat obscure—we don’t know when we’ll be over a bend, look back and realize the bottom of the valley is farther away than you expected—but we can trust that choosing to walk, even getting out of bed on some days, is a way of moving, living, being. Just keep swimming.