Today is May 17th and on this day in history, we celebrate National Learn to Swim Day.
Water remembers everything. It was here before us, will be here after us, and somehow we spend our first nine months suspended in it before taking our first breath of air. Then we spend years learning how not to drown in it. Strange journey, that.
Most people don’t realize that learning to swim isn’t really about moving your arms and legs in the right way. It’s about surrender. That moment when you finally stop fighting the water and trust it to hold you. The body naturally floats – it’s the panic that sinks us.
Think about the first time a kid finally gets it. That split second where fear transforms into wonder. The water suddenly shifts from enemy to ally. One minute they’re thrashing, certain they’ll sink, the next they’re horizontal, looking up at the sky, realizing the water had no intention of swallowing them whole.
The Greeks believed swimming was such a fundamental skill that they’d dismiss an uneducated person by saying, “He can neither swim nor read.” But what were they really saying? Maybe that both reading and swimming require the same fundamental trust – that the words will carry your mind just as water carries your body.
On days like today, someone somewhere is taking that first back float, arms stretched wide, chest to the sky. There’s a lesson in that posture – completely vulnerable, completely supported. The physics of buoyancy doesn’t care if you believe in it or not. The water will hold you regardless.
Swimming teaches us something that defies our modern instincts – sometimes progress comes from doing less, not more. Relax the shoulders. Soften the neck. Breathe easy. The water does the work if you let it.
When we sink into that space between effort and surrender, we find ourselves carried. Not just in water, but in life. We spend so much time treading frantically to stay afloat when often, the current knows exactly where we need to go.
Maybe that’s the real celebration today – not just learning to move through water, but learning to trust what naturally holds us up when we stop struggling against it.
Leave a Reply