The Tide is High
Years ago, I was on a cruise.
It was a lot of fun, but by the time we docked in Cozumel, Mexico, I’d had enough of the big tourist excursions with lots of people.
I just wanted to get away.
So I disembarked and found this local guy to take me to a place called Chankanaab, a national park in Mexico.
Sure. Amazing. Let’s go.
It was magical.
Private. Quiet. Serene. Beautiful.
The ocean stretched out before us, appearing as calm and at ease as we were that day.
The park was known for its iguanas and cats that roamed around freely.
And I embraced that domestic and wild nature—and I embraced a few cats too—but left the iguanas alone.
The sun was warm and becoming hotter as the day lingered on.
And the ocean was there, inviting me in.
So in I went.
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I went out into the water and swam, and it was deliriously delightful.
That might have been my first experience with an ocean other than the Pacific.
Oceans can be warm?
I never thought so!
I was swimming out there when I noticed the tide was taking me farther out than I wanted to go.
And I thought:
Dear Ocean:
How dare you.
How dare you?
So I began swimming into that tide, working to reach the shore.
And swim and swim and swim I did.
Seemingly never making any progress toward the beach.
I became more and more tired, but still felt like I could make it.
Then my body kicked into survival mode.
I dug deeper.
I swam harder.
And harder.
Finally, I reached the beach.
I crawled onto the sand, exhausted, and just lay there.
Depleted.
Out of breath.
Spent.
I thought:
Maybe those large tourist activities had something to offer after all.
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As I was recalling that trip recently, I started thinking about what a metaphor it was for my life at that time.
How much I’d struggled and pushed and gone beyond the limits of my physical, mental, and emotional resources just trying to reach the goal.
Forgetting about safety.
Replenishment.
Nurture.
Listening to my body.
Just push, push, push.
Swimming toward the beach of my desire, but rarely with any measurable progress.
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Much of my younger life, I experienced periods of depression followed by periods of overwhelming belief in myself.
The literal teeter-totter of life.
I had found that substances of my own choosing could help me navigate these tides.
Those moments could be dark and stormy. They would pull me out to sea, leaving me adrift.
And if there was an anchor or something to grasp onto, sometimes it seemed only to drag me farther underwater.
That was my pattern.
And, as they say, eventually you get sick and tired of being sick and tired.
A change came.
And I was ready for that change.
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Making changes doesn’t necessarily mean life is suddenly going to be clear sailing.
As I was about to find out.
I had gotten a little time under my belt away from substances and had found a few new “tools” I wanted to use to manage my life.
I had yet to learn that just because you stop doing harmful things to yourself doesn’t mean life is going to stop offering you challenges.
But without those old patterns of self-medication, I wondered:
Could I survive the depression storm without my liquid courage?
Because I knew a storm was coming.
I could feel when depression, worry, and anxiety were beginning to gather.
I could feel the shift in me.
And now I was standing there with just a few new tools.
Breath.
Mindfulness.
A little movement.
Things I could possess internally.
And I didn’t know yet whether they would be strong enough, powerful enough, true enough to guide me through.
I sensed it coming.
Like storm clouds on the horizon.
Like the barometer dropping.
A shift in the wind.
I knew a storm was coming.
How dare you.
How dare you?
What would I do?
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In the past, these storms could last for days or weeks.
They were miserable.
I was miserable—both to myself and to those around me.
Could I handle it?
And there I was, right at the storm wall of emotional turbulence.
I’ve never liked the word surrender.
It has a lot of negative connotations for me. Maybe it’s all the television I watched growing up.
Surrender always seemed to mean defeat.
But this time it was different.
It was the end of resistance.
A place of strength rather than submission.
I needed this concept of “surrender” to have some action item attached to it.
What could I do?
I went inward and saw all the preparations I had been making over the last few months.
I had battened down the hatches on some of my desires.
I had stockpiled supplies of breath and movement.
I told myself I was as ready as I could be for the storm.
Tilting at windmills or screaming at the wind was not going to stop this from happening.
So I said:
“Come and get me, you __________.”
Fill in the blank. Some children read this, you know.
I let the storm take me.
I let depression fully enter my existence.
It was a little topsy-turvy.
I felt like Gilligan and the Skipper being tossed about the sea in their tiny boat.
And I knew this could be longer than a three-hour tour.
But wouldn’t you know it?
What used to drown me in sorrow and depression for many days or weeks…
only lasted a few gentle days.
Land Ho!
I thought:
Shit. Could this have been this easy all along?
There were lessons I still needed to learn, but that was my first use of a new way of allowing.
Of being.
Of breathing.
Of moving.
But damn.
It had been a hard emotional ride for many years.
And I started wondering:
Was I resisting it all along?
Was I trying to fight the storm?
Was I swimming into the tide?
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Looking back on that day in Cozumel, I now believe I was caught in a riptide.
Maybe not an incredibly powerful one, but one that challenged me and came frighteningly close to winning.
And I know that the “riptides” of life can be frighteningly powerful and seem frighteningly close to overtaking us.
But I know something now that I didn’t understand then.
You don’t defeat a riptide by exhausting yourself swimming directly against it.
Sometimes you let it carry you.
Sometimes you swim parallel.
You work with what is happening rather than exhausting yourself fighting what is already here.
Those are strategies I eventually learned for the ocean.
And, strangely enough, they became strategies I learned for the riptides of my mind.
Because I think it is often the resistance that depletes me most.
Trying to resist a situation because it brings stress.
Trying to resist a feeling because I don’t want to have it right now.
Trying to resist the possibility that maybe now is simply the time to rest.
Surrender is a tough one.
There are days when I do have to man up.
And show up.
But showing up doesn’t mean I have to negate what’s already there.
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It’s also a practice I’ve been learning with my lovely and beautiful wife, Sarah.
Sometimes I want to force her into a place that matches whatever my mood happens to be at that moment.
Couldn’t she just be a glorified puppet, saying and doing all the things I want her to say and do?
And let me tell you:
That puppet can bite when you try to put her into a box!
But maybe there’s something in the story of Geppetto and Pinocchio.
Eventually, Pinocchio had to become who he was.
No longer having to lie.
No longer having to hide.
Free to dance with the freedom of being exactly who he is.
Maybe loving someone means allowing them their own weather.
Their own tide.
Their own place on the shore.
Without insisting that they swim toward mine.
And maybe I’m a little bit of a puppet too sometimes.
Mainly a head made of wood.
I’m pretty dense.
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The tide can be high and swift.
It carries us at times where we don’t want to go.
Sometimes the storm rolls in.
I’m learning that I don’t have to fight every current.
I can breathe.
I can feel.
I can rest.
I can swim parallel.
Maybe surrender isn’t giving up.
Maybe it’s learning how to move with what is already here.
The tide is high.
Maybe I’m not holding on.
Maybe I’m just resisting less.
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ROAR with Love,
Danny
The Emotional Driver
“Emotion Is the Note. You Are the Song.”
