Dedicated to the Diminished: Nine Things I Learned Coming in Ninth

Yesterday I swam four kilometers across the Kinneret, and I came in ninth among the 400 and something women.

For a lifelong athlete, ninth place is nothing to write home about. But I am not a lifelong athlete. I'm a 48-year-old woman, a plus size bubby, and spent most of my life knowing that I might belong in the orchestra, in the library or chilling with the other nerds. But not on a sport team. I was among the last to get picked for any game during PE. Never participated in any afternoon competitive sport throughout my school career. So for me, ninth place felt less like ninth place and more like someone handing me an Olympic medal. That’s the top 2.5 percent. So yeah, I giving myself props!

Someone asked me how long the 4k took. The short answer is 1hr and 32 minutes. The long answer is that really, it started years ago.

I grew up believing athleticism was something for other people. Less Jewish. Not descended from holocaust survivors. Even when we rode bikes, it wasn’t because we were athletic. It was just transportation.

The first time I did the swim, three years ago, a friend who came with me and came in second, she said it’s so cool to have a Tzfat friend who is athletic!

I said, what you talkin’ about girl? Me, athletic? Wrong address.

She’s like, hello?! You just swam 4k! That took me some digesting.

That year I didn’t even bother checking where I came in. I was glad I made it alive to the other side! But I kept on swimming. What started as a few panting laps that totally winded me, became a weekly or bi-weekly habit, that stretched into many dozens of laps in time frames that impressed even myself. The second year was also a challenging swim, but now I was hooked... Which catches us up to training for this year.

This year my favorite local pool was closed since the war with Iran. So I rearranged my work schedule to be at the available pool for their limited Tuesday hours. When I started training for this swim my expecations were really low. Again, I was just hoping I’d make it to the other side.

And yet there I was, 3:30 Friday morning, when my alarm goes off telling me to get out of my warm bed and head towards the cold water. A couple hours later I’m standing at the edge of the Kinneret with a few hundred other ladies, ready to SWIM!

Which brings me to the first thing I learned.

1. The hardest part is STARTING.

Not the middle. Not the end. Not the aching shoulders or the arms that stop listening to you somewhere around kilometer three.

The hardest part is waking up. Deciding to get out of bed. Then standing on the shore, while the water is cold and turning back is still an option. Once you're in the water, you simply swim, there's nothing else to do. But before you're in, you still have to choose. I keep thinking about how many of the people I sit with are standing on their own shore right now, completely capable of swimming, just terrified of that first cold step.

2. You don't need to see the finish line.

Most of the time I couldn't. The Kinneret is big, and often all I could see was the next orange buoy. So I swam to it. Then I lifted my head, found the next one, and swam to that. Sometimes I drifted off course and had to correct. Sometimes I stopped, breathed, and got my bearings.

Life works more or less the same way. We burn so much energy wishing we could see the whole map. Usually we can't. Usually we just need the next marker. When we crossed the Yam Suf, the kids books show it splitting all the way through. But the midrash says, and the lived reality is that it only opens just enough to see where to put the next foot. That’s ok. Lean in and keep going.

3. Never underestimate a good soundtrack!

Long-distance swimming is, I'll be honest, deeply boring. Stroke, stroke, stroke. The water doesn't change. The rhythm doesn't change. You don't change.

And then a new song would come on, and the whole world would tilt. Nothing about my situation had moved an inch - same lake, same distance, same tired me - and suddenly it all felt different. Just the soundtrack. I keep noticing how often that's true on dry land too. Sometimes the thing that needs changing isn't the circumstance. It's the soundtrack playing underneath it. Each song has a history for me. Associations. Who I sang it with. Who I was when this song first touched my soul. An energy that the rhytm communicates to my muscles. A line of inspiration to keep me plugging on. So lesson three? When life is hard, change the sound track.

4. Joy is not a luxury.

The day before the swim, a client said something I haven't been able to put down. Life, she told me, is mostly mind-numbing boredom. The routine dragging on and on - broken only by the occasional stab of terror, fear, and pain. And that, more or less, is the whole of it.

I could feel exactly what she meant. I’ve lived life long enough to totally get it. But it was clear to me even as she said it, that she was missing at least one more crucial ingredient. I'd be lying if I said the swim didn't hold both of her origionals: the stroke, stroke, stroke that never changes, and the moments my body filed its complaints in no uncertain terms.

Boredom and pain were out there on the water in full supply.

But the lake kept handing me the ingredient she'd left out. The mountains going pink with the first light. The shock of cool water on warm skin. The strangers swimming beside me, all of us chasing the same buoy, raising money for the same good cause. The plain, ridiculous gladness of being alive and floating, held by something far bigger than me. Connection, delight, meaning. These aren't decoration laid over a life of boredom and fear. They're the third thing. It's the payoff for being alive.

We talk a lot about grit and discipline, and yes, those matter, but joy isn't just the reward waiting at the finish line. It's the sparks, the moments and glimmers that we collect like pearls along the path. The embodiment, the breath. The LIFE force inhabiting the whole thing.

Eishes Chayil says of the woman, vatischak l'yom acharon, she laughs on the last day. I wanna be that wrinkled old lady who on my dying day can look back and see the moments of delight, connection, meaning, love, and beauty, along with the grief, loss, and confusion that are inevitably a part of life. I want to look back and laugh with satisfaction. Good G-d, what a masterpiece of a life. That was awesome!

5. The diminished are not their diminishment

The week before the swim I heard too many stories of women being abused. Situations where the power is skewed against them and their children. Types of abuse for which there is no recourse. Or even worse, types of abuse where trying to defend yourself only makes things worse.

As I swam, I thought of them. And I thought of all the diminished parts of myself, the parts that never believed a morning like this was possible in one lifetime, now getting to celebrate. But I knew the difference. The story I outswam this morning was mine to shed. For these women, the diminishment isn't a story. It's real, and it's not theirs to simply let go of. So I prayed, stroke after stroke, that they would come into their own glory and success, beH. And that I'd be there to bask in the glow when it's their time to shine.

6. Loneliness doesn't dissolve just because something beautiful happens.

I'll be honest about this one. There were moments I wished someone were waiting at the finish line who truly understood what this meant. Wished there was someone there to catch me as I found my land legs again. Someone who could see me in that moment, and help me see myself through new eyes.

So many people were with me in spirit, including the twenty-some friends and family who sponsored me. I felt every one of them out there, and I'm more grateful than I can say. If you're reading this — thank you! 😉 But for various - totally understandable - reasons, none of them were on that beach at 7:32am that Friday morning. I looked around at the strangers celebrating and having breakfast together, and wished I had a companion present in the flesh.

I sent some messages to friends and family who I knew would appreciate what had just happened. The love poured back in.

At the same time the wish was real. And the accomplishment was real. Neither one canceled out the other. I think we expect joy and accomplishments to arrive and evict our loneliness and lack, and then we're confused when the two of them end up sharing a room. They can both be true at the same time. Often they are.

And often connection is closer than we think - if we reach for it.

8. Every yes has a no folded inside it.

My plan for this swim was to give it all I got for the first 2 k. Then to slow down, float a bit, enjoy the beauty. Take a drink at one of the floating rest stops, then proceed at a more leasurely pace. When I got to the 2.5k marker, I looked ahead and saw only 3 women in front of me. I was shocked. What? I’m at the head of the pack? I turned and looked back and saw the others. I realized that I could go with plan A and chill, or I could keep pushing forward and challenge the boundaries of what I believed I was capable of.

I realized that I may not have another opportunity to push forward. I decided to challenge myself.

I put my head back into the water and pushed on. You can’t see much of the scenery when you are swimming hard. Breath, stroke, breath. In the half-second my face cleared the water, I caught the mountains flushed coral, the sky washed in first blue, light folding over the hills. Almost prettier in a fast blur.

The sensations of the water gently rocking. But there was a lot that I know that I missed. I promised myself to find a time to come back and enjoy the morning sky over the kinneret.

Yesterday I chose to swim fast. Which meant I didn't choose to swim slow, float and gaze at the sky. Or sleep in. I didn't choose a slow morning with a book and coffee. I didn't choose a dozen other perfectly good things.

We can spend so long mourning the doors we didn't open that we forget to walk through the one we did. Every real yes costs something, that's not a flaw in it, it's what makes it a yes. And the grief over what you let go, the small losses and the big ones, is part of the yes too. So you make your choice and you lean in. Some doors wait for you. Some close behind you. You choose anyway.

7. Pain and confusion is information, not an order.

There were stretches that hurt. My body had opinions and shared them freely.

The work - and it's the same work I do with people all day long - wasn't pretending the pain wasn't there. It was learning to notice it without handing it the steering wheel. The ache was telling me something. I listened and was present. I inhabited my whole body. Paid attention to the muscles and the joints. And kept going forward. At about 3km, I was pushing forward with all of my strength. Last I had taken stock, I could only see 3 swimmers ahead of me, and one more about to pass me on my left. But suddenly I looked up and saw a large flock far ahead of me! How had that happened? Then I turned and saw many behind me as well. It took me a moment to realize that there was another group that was swimming 1.5k, and would be finishing on the same beach around the same time. We had caught up with each other. This stage was a little disorienting, I didn’t know where I was holding, and needed to be more careful not to collide. Sometimes the lay of the land changes. We bump into the unexpected. But we take in the information, and maybe even change course, but still stay in stride…

9. Stories matter.

Once I realized I had a real shot, I caught myself already writing this in my head. You, yes you, dear reader, were with me in those moments. Knowing I would be able to share this with you gave me strength and determination. So thank you!

As I swam I was collecting moments. Collecting lessons. Collecting the dawn-struck mountains and the buoys and the ache. The water will pass, the moment passes. But what am I taking with me? The story lasts.

We are meaning-making creatures. Our stories connect us within ourselves, each other, our heritage. As Jewish people, we live by our stories, which is exactly why it matters so much when one of them turns out to be false. How many stories have I told myself about myself that were based on a narrative I could have discarded? How often do I choose to make meaning out of habit, and not because the meaning supports me and the life I want to live?

This swim mattered to me not because of the number nine. It mattered because it walked straight up to a story I've carried for decades, that I'm not athletic, that people like me don't do things like this, that certain possibilities are reserved for other people, and quietly called that story's bluff.

So tell me, what story are you ready to stop believing? Drop a thought in the comments below; I read every one.

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