Drawing the Chicken 23: Take a Risk/ You Can Pass

In the workshops I teach, one of our first agreements is always to find our own unique moment-to-moment balance between the ideas of “take a risk” and “you can pass”— to challenge ourselves to go into the new and unfamiliar territories where growth happens, but also to take care of ourselves and step back when our wellbeing or safety demands it. Today, I got to test that out for myself, and I am pretty proud of how I did.

In 2018, I had tried scuba diving in Turkey. The place I went with had amazing reviews but didn’t do what I now know to be pretty basic safety protocols— they did not introduce us to the equipment in a pool first, so we only got a basic brief on the boat and then were (quite literally) pushed into deep water. My mask was ill fitting and flew off my face as soon as I dived, and I swallowed a lot of seawater before coming up for air. The instructor wasn’t prepared for what it would take to calm someone down and help them begin to trust the equipment again after that, and no one had taught me something as simple as how to clear my mask of water did enter again, so I was completely panicked. My instructor was impatient with my fear and keen to get on with the day, so i never ended up being able to go below the surface of the water. I felt like I had failed.

I’ve always wanted to try again, and nearly seven years later, I mustered the courage to register for a dive off the Pondicherry coast. I’ve been in very cerebral spaces for the last few weeks, and I needed a change, but even more than that, I needed to check this off my bucket list, not as daredevilry but simply as having tried again to meet the ocean more deeply.

This time, I did more research. I found a school that would first train me on using the equipment inside a pool— working through my panic there, in a safe and familiar space, before trying it out in the ocean felt like a physical manifestation of so much from the well being mental health conversations I’ve been taking part it at the NPI conference and beyond. After my pool session yesterday, I noticed how much my body still panicked underwater, how it didn’t believe my brain that I was in fact still breathing. I came home and did more research, understood a bit more about how to stop tightening my chest, practised Alexander technique with my nose pinched, just to give my body that kind of memory of release and breath.

I still woke up extremely anxious today, so much so that I briefly considered not going to meet the boat. I talked to my body then, promised her I’d listen to her and take care of her. I promised myself that I would tell my instructor about my panic, ask him to remind me of my breath underwater. I promised my body I would walk my own talk about finding the balance between taking a risk into uncomfortable terrain and knowing when to pass.

I met the boat. On our half hour ride out to the dive site, the waters were extremely choppy. Our instructors told us to look at the horizon if we got seasick, not at the water, and that too felt like a metaphor— the looking out towards the goal, rather than focusing on the closest, most panicky thing. I asked myself what my horizon was for this dive, what I was trying to prove. I found myself saying that there was nothing to prove, only this thing to attempt. I found myself saying my horizon was simply that I wanted to meet the ocean more deeply.

The instructor also told us not to spend too much time on the surface because that’s where the ocean is roughest, that descending sooner would help us feel better. I thought about a metaphor I’ve encountered often in my Buddhist practice, the idea that all that we get so overwhelmed by is usually the surface storms of life, the waves and cyclones, but that we all have access to something more more profound, the steady calm of the deeper ocean. I decided my horizon was also that I wanted to meet that calm for myself, to experience it physically not just metaphorically.

I made the jump. Before we descended, I told my instructor about the previous experience, told him o would probably panic and need to be reminded to breathe. Thankfully, he turned out to be the kindest, most supportive presence. He had my place both palms on his shoulders and start breathing in the water, and he waited until I said we could descend. Every time he saw me starting to clench up underwater, he reminded me to open my chest and let the air into my lungs. He let me hold his hand whenever I needed to, and I was reminded how much a simple human touch helps with calming the nervous system. Slowly, I learned to trust the equipment, to find a rhythm with my breath. Slowly, I started to meet the ocean, say hello to the fish, marvel at life underwater.

We were supposed to descend 12 m, equalising the pressure in our ears every metre or so. Beyond ten metres, though, I simply wasn’t able to equalise, my left ear started hurting terribly. We went a few metres up, it got better, descended again and it got worse. We surfaced, talked about it, decided to try again. We went down again, and the same thing— all well for the first ten metres, and then the pain, this time in both ears. I gave my instructor the not-okay signal, and we surfaced again. He told me it might be a sinus thing, that some of our bodies don’t do well under that pressure. We made a decision together to not push any further for risk of one. We floated closer to the surface for a while, then joined the rest of the group back on the boat.

On the boat ride back to shore, I felt a quiet pride. Not the exhilaration of an adrenalin rush but the gratitude of having been able to challenge a fear, do my research, talk to my body, get help where I needed it, take risks— and also know when to stop taking risks and take care of myself instead.

What does this have to do with creativity? Everything, I think. If I can bring half of this to the next time I encounter scary territory in my creative work, I will have done myself a huge favour. And if all I can do is remember to keep focused on the horizon— that faraway distant dream of a line  that one will never quite arrive at— when the creative waters get choppy, that too will be enough.