Life Lessons Reinforced by Diving
Fresh and still basking in the after-glow of my first few warm water dives, each a personal milestone dive, it occurred to me that by my 3rd dive in two days, I was exuberant. The apprehension I’d felt prior to day one, caused purely by the fact that it’d been 4 months since my last dive and this was only my 13th dive to date, had all but dissipated. It didn’t matter much that my dive computer went to deco mode and I had to do an 8-min safety stop, or that I was confronted by an aggressive angelfish, or that nurse sharks glided past mere feet beneath me.
I’m by no means an experienced diver, with just 16 dives to my name, but there are things I’ve applied to diving that are part of my identity as a person. It is introspective as much as it is a reinforcement of thoughts and lessons that have become a habit.
- Control is an illusion
- Communicate effectively
- Be curious, conscious and aware
- Wits first, strength next
- Trust others
- Indulge and enjoy
1. Control is an illusion and it begins and ends with you
Your range of control is contained to your person and the things immediately physically attached to you — BCD, regulator, air-tank, fins, mask.
It would be foolish to presume that you can control anything but yourself.
Once in the vastness of the deep blue, whether visibility is 150ft or -5ft (I’ve experienced both), nearly everything centers on your ability to maintain neutral buoyancy — your enjoyment of the dive, movement in the water, ease of being one with your environment… losing control of your buoyancy is just the beginning of all of your underwater problems.
If you master yourself, everything else will surely and steadily fall into place.
Being honest with yourself and clearly knowing what you can and do not control is the first step to being successful at anything. Diving or life.
2. Communicate effectively
You can’t speak underwater, as a recreational diver at least, and one of the first things you learn is hand signals and communication. Knowing how to indicate up, okay, amount of remaining air, some other random problem, identifying sea life; you learn a whole new language.
And a universal one at that. Communicating it clearly and precisely is vital, a matter of life or death, if we’re being real here.
If you mistakenly indicate “up” when you actually meant “ok”, you’d be in trouble. Learn to be open, pre-emptive and crystal clear.
Effective communication, in its most basic form even, goes a long way in not just ensuring your safety, but also being a better diver. And person.
3. Be Curious, Conscious and Aware of Everything Around You
Diving is a sensory overload and the underwater world even more so. You obviously can’t keep track of everything, but honing your sense of awareness makes it easier for you to adapt to and enjoy this world.
From knowing what a difference in depth does to your body, adjusting your kick to the flow of current to looking out for jutting corals, an approaching boat, or sea-creature… your circle of awareness gradually expands.
You learn to process bits and pieces of what you see and hear, associate by experience and memory, and use that information to make decisions. Your self-awareness also increases, and soon everything you do underwater becomes second nature. This is the unconscious mind at work.
You will, also, consciously learn to pay attention to other details, and file them away in a part of your brain for later use.
Grasp at every piece of information you can. Curiosity leads to awareness which leads to informed (or instinctive) acts.
4. Wits First, Strength Next
Of course you have to be physically fit to dive! It’s an extreme sport, and without an able body, it would be a struggle to pursue it. The good old phrase of “Mens sana in corpore sano” resounds in my head.
But remember, a sound body, when diving, is only as useful as the mind operating it. Strength and physical prowess help in more situations than you can image, but making smart choices, i.e. enabled by your wits and brain, is going to help you more.
As humans, it is so easy to react to something you perceive as a threat or a simple change, and it takes every ounce of will power you can muster to prevent your body from being the first to respond.
Every rule book in diving will tell you that first, most important, aspect of diving is to breathe continuously. Holding your breath or arhythmic breathing affects your buoyancy and puts your health at risk (lung over-expansion for one), but it also causes you to panic. And vice-versa when panicking causes you to hyper-ventilate.
Keeping your head calm, and focused, assessing the situation and then reacting to it will save you. Lashing out at something physically first, is not going to do you any favors.
Breathe -> Assess -> React
5. Trust Others
You never dive alone. You will have a dive buddy and you must implicitly trust them. Whether they are your personal friend, or someone you just happened to meet on the boat at a dive site, you must have mutual trust.
It is a relationship forged by necessity and or experience, and it is the making of you as a diver.
As with any human bond, there is a sense of respect and knowledge that goes into building this link, and you must invest in it. Whether it’s one other person or a group of people, you’ve got to learn to trust them and earn theirs in return.
6. Indulge & Enjoy
As with everything new and different, I’m constantly shocked and surprised at it – my lips going numb in saline water, flipping off a boat, catching a drift, descending to 100ft, being underwater for over an hour… fishes staring at you in curiosity, watching the light play into the deep blue of the ocean, feeling my stomach drop at the sight of a never ending ocean valley, drifting through a coral cavern…
Unless you immerse yourself completely in something, indulge in it with your entire being – mind, body and soul, you won’t enjoy it to the fullest.
You feel a sense of accomplishment that is only surpassed by a serene satisfaction of having experienced it. Only true indulgence can give you that.
