On life as holding one’s breath (series: notes to myself)

It started as a dare. As a stone, on the bottom of the pool. Could you collect it, she wondered, and gently-joyfully she pushed me. I said yes, of course, while I was still falling.

And I did. Even if I could not stop spluttering afterwards. Even if my eyes were itching and my mouth tasted clean. I delivered it. So she threw it again, a bit further, where the slope of the bottom started. She smiled. I understood. This time quietly, I dared more. Silly proud of the attention. Of my will to succeed. Of the success that would follow.

I returned the stone, but I knew what was going to happen. And she did. The little stone, polished, smooth, and blackish, left her hand and sunk into the deepest side. So blue that it was almost purple, like Homer’s sea. You could not see where it was. But I dived anyway. Lungs full of the same pride. Confident. White and pale diamond reflections flipping off the millions of little squares everywhere. What game this was — I thought. Eyes open, feeling the weight of the water above my head. And I looked back. Close to the bottom. I turned for a moment, the pool pressing on my chest, my shoulders against the bottom, to see her through layers of water. And I could still guess the whiteness of her profile. I turned again. And then, I stopped and understood the lesson.

It was not a dare but a trick. I realised this was life. Surrounded by water. Coming from outside and going back to the same outside. Death was when you could breathe. When the sun touched your skin. When gravity held your feet to the ground. It was before and after my search for the stone, my attempt to reach the prize. Life was being immersed, holding one’s breath. It was disorienting. A space without direction, you plunged into it from without, spent a moment within, and soon you were out again. You did not ask to dive, someone else’s pushy game threw you into the water. It might not have happened. But you could not hold your breath for long. You had to leave. You had to be free of the water. And the smile that asked you to collect that little stone would be there again when you, breathless, tired, free again, will rejoin the universe that was before and after the short dive.

I saw the stone. I grabbed it, now knowing better. And I pushed hard with all my strength against the bottom of the pool. I had to leave to live. And with my fist in the sky, I emerged again, triumphant with her stone, gasping laughingly at the girl.

She had left, but I knew I would see her again. I have her stone. I have kept it for decades now. I will return it when I breathe again, unable to swim anymore, emerging from this momentary life. She is waiting — with a smile.

PS The second edition of Notes to myself is available as a book on Amazon: https://a.co/d/c0NmO2F