I am convinced that, someday, I will save someone’s life when I rescue them from drowning.
I suspect not everyone shares this idea.
Growing up on an island, I was taught to approach the water with deep respect and a simultaneous pride in my abilities and understanding of my limitations.
When you’re being pulled out to sea by a riptide, you escape it by swimming parallel to shore until you’re out. I can’t remember exactly when I learned this and also I can’t remember not knowing. It could help me save someone else someday.
As a kid I remember feeling a responsibility to look out for the other folks in the water and spring to help if needed. Lately I’ve been thinking about how heavy that is for a small person. I still feel it doing laps in the pool at my gym, where we’re all capable adults swimming in barely five feet of currentless water.
I wonder how this internal imperative has crept into other aspects of my life. The first, deepest lesson: When someone else is drowning, you do everything you can to save them.
Liz Welsh 