The Leapless Leap.

Standing on the diving board at 10 in the morning, in mid- December. It was freezing cold outside.A few minutes earlier all the boys had gone into the changing rooms with their teeth chattering, but it was warmer inside the Public Swimming Pool , for which we were grateful

After discarding our winter clothes,scarves, gloves and thick woollen socks,there we were, a mixed group of 12, 13 year old schoolboys having their weekly swimming lessons.

Every Thursday at 9.30 ,all through the Winter Term.
Hardly anyone had known  how to swim when the lessons started ; although an island people the English seem to have a strange reluctance to brave the waters.
Maybe it has something to do with the weather.

I had learned to swim a little because my father ( bless his soul ) had taught me the basics of the breast stroke when we used to take our holidays in Whitstable
.What happy memories  I have of those days; the sun always used to shine ( I'm sure it didn't ) meals of egg and chips, fish and chips, and playing in the fields with my brother and friends I had met from a nearby farm.

I remember a delightful morning spent in the pig sty , not caring at all about the stench, or the muck
 that had got on my clothes.

I think my mother did though., but she didn't really make a fuss( bless her as well ).

I was truly blessed with  wonderful parents, for which I am truly grateful..

So  I knew how to swim a little but I was still scared of the water. I never wanted to go out of my depth.
I never had the courage to trust the water. I could never surrender to this  strange element.

On that particular morning so long ago, I stood, as the gym master had told us all to do, in a line before the dreaded ( to me ) diving board.
I watched in amazement as timid little  Lawrence of the lower third, bravely dived  headfirst into the water.

Then, Smithy with a smile on his face, take the dive , as if he had been doing this all his life.

These guys had only just learned to swim. How come they were so brave ?

.Then it was my turn.

I walked onto the diving board, looked down at the deep water - it was the deep end - and, and froze.

I couldn't move; I was completely stuck.

' Dive, dive', the gym master yelled.

I stared at him; I stared at all the boys behind me.I stared at the deep,deep water below me.

I sweated , I shivered,  I was wrapped in fear.

Suddenly, I heard my voice, loud and clear and precise shout ,' I can't sir. I just cannot '.

To my amazement the master shouted,' Get down then '.

The memory has haunted me all my life.I felt a failure, a fool in front of so many people,and yet no one said a thing about it afterwards; not one schoolkid mocked me and neither did the master. It was like they knew that my fear had just been too big, and they , with their own secret fears, knew that some things should not be said
.

This brings me to now.Though, of course, all the above took place in the now.

To take that dive from the false self into the real self.

To take that leapless leap.

To throw off your fears, your brainwashing, your comfort in you belief in your false self, into those
unknown deep waters of  the reality of being, takes a lot more courage than I had when I was a child.

Those waters that I was so scared of were not apart from me, they were me, but I was so conditioned by everything  I had been taught I didn't know the truth.

But, I do now.

So do you.

Let's take that leapless leap.

Mike Selley..





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