Just Keep Swimming

One of the first entries in The Book of Awakening is titled "Life in the Tank." In it Mark Nepo writes an anecdote about the unexpected behavior of his friend’s fish. The friend put his fish in the bathtub temporarily while he scrubbed out their tank. When he was ready to put the fish back, he found that they had stayed in one small area of the tub, swimming in circles that were roughly the size of their little tank. The fish weren’t darting about–enjoying all that extra room–but had remained within the amount of space that was familiar. Observing this behavior, Mark Nepo penned some beautiful insights about how we as humans also confine ourselves to what we know, afraid to explore possibilities that may challenge our identities or expectations.

A tattered sticky note is hanging off that page, where years ago I enthusiastically scribbled my initial reaction to the passage:

Fearing life outside the tank makes your world small. Be open to the world around you and the possibilities it may present, even when it pushes you out of your comfort zone.

Reading these words again this past week, I felt a sweet sense of nostalgia for all the times in my life when I have been faced with the choice to remain comfortable in my small world or challenge my assumptions about myself. It was rarely ever an easy decision, but in hindsight it has always been worth it.

In my adolescent years, how I viewed myself was largely shaped by what my family, friends, and teachers thought of me. I unconsciously developed a particular identity and set of expectations about how I was supposed to act based on this input. I was smart. I was not an athlete. I was quiet. I was not a leader. I followed the rules. I was not a risk taker. I sulked instead of standing up for myself. I felt an obligation to meet the expectations of the adults in my life, not to follow my own desires. Whether or not these statements were true, I had come to believe them as facts about my teenage self.

Then I moved away from home to attend college. Suddenly I was dumped out of my little tank and into the bathtub. I left a town with a population of 11,000 to live in a city with 200,000 people. Instead of fifteen classes to choose from there were fifteen hundred. I was enrolled at a university with a diverse range of students from all over the world as opposed to my homogeneous high school. 

Feeling uncertain about my new surroundings and how I fit into them, I kept my head down and stuck to the facts. I was smart, I was quiet, and I followed the rules. I clung to my older brother and the friends from high school who were also attending the university. I quickly made a routine of class and studying, eating at the same cafeteria next to my dorm each day. I was swimming in little circles, even though there was so much space to explore.

I could have stayed in that small world until I graduated, but fortunately it didn’t take long for my curiosity to get the better of me. Feeling stunted by the small, predictable world I had organized, I was forced to consider that I might have my facts wrong. I started to notice interesting people and events on campus. I stopped trying to be invisible and made small talk with my classmates. I began to find opportunities to try new things that appealed to me at a deeper level than the “facts” I knew about myself. And as I did, the identity I had constructed for myself started to shift.

Maybe I wasn’t athletic, but I loved watching hockey and had always wished I had learned to play. So I joined a recreational ice hockey team. Maybe I wasn’t the type to break the rules, but I started going to parties and drinking with my new friends. Maybe the adults in my life thought I should be an engineer, but I applied for admittance to the elementary education program. Maybe the old labels didn't quite fit anymore, and it was time to listen to my own heart. It wasn't long before I was swimming laps around the whole bathtub.

And so it has happened time and time again in my life. Just when I start to get cozy with my ideas about who I am and how I engage with the world, I make a decision that throws me into a bigger tank. Whether it was moving across the country on my own, getting married, taking a new job, or living alone for the first time in my life, I can look back at each transition and see the opportunities it provided for me to question my assumptions about who I am and to explore who I want to be.

Along with a host of other things, I have realized that I am smart and moderately athletic. I am a quiet leader. I am the kind of person who speaks up when she or someone else is treated unfairly–most of the time. I make decisions based on what I want, not what others want for me.

I am both grateful and excited that who I am will constantly evolve, so long as I am willing to push myself to keep swimming.