Learning how to lap
When I was in high school, I decided to take a lifeguarding class. I was a decent enough swimmer, I figured. The challenge of learning how to be a lifeguard sounded adventurous to me and would allow me to have a job that paid better than babysitting. I knew it would challenge me, and while I was nervous, I decided to give it a go.
There was both classroom and pool instruction, and I was definitely stronger in the classroom than in the pool. I dutifully did my workbook assignments and was an eager and active participant in class. I hoped that my "good enough" swimming skills would be good enough during the pool instruction time as well.
But on the third or fourth pool instruction time, the instructor gave me and a handful of other students a more serious talking-to, with the heat of reality behind it: "Some of you really need to increase your physical endurance and stamina. You are petering out way too early in these instructional sessions. You've got to be exercising regularly outside of this class time. It is your responsibility to improve your physical conditioning. I cannot do it for you. But if you don't improve your fitness, you won't become a lifeguard -- period."
It didn't feel comfortable at all to get that cold bath of reality from him, but it was clear that his earlier gentle admonitions to growth weren't getting through to us. Still, within his frustration and even anger, our instructor was offering us mediocre-in-the-pool students an invitation. That exasperated invitation came within an envelope of real faith and hope that growth was not only theoretically possible -- "If one exercises, one can become more physically fit!" -- but possible for us. That is, he was extending a personal invitation to us in the faith and hope that the growth was possible for us. Reality demanded it of us. We had to be the ones to do it. He couldn't do it for us. If we wanted to become lifeguards, we had to take up this particular invitation.
Signing up for the class was a moment of growth for me. Doing the workbook exercises involved some personal growth too, but this instructor's invitation to improve my physical fitness outside of classroom time was next-level stuff. Did I really want to be a lifeguard? I wasn't sure! But I was being invited to the realities of the path, and was necessarily, inescapably, going to involve lapping, and learning how to lap for myself with the goal of improved physical fitness.
This invitation put me into contact with things that I were not at all my natural strengths: administrative decisions about structuring my time, prioritzing physical exercise (ugh!), even some necessary accountability (double ugh!). I figured out the logistics and the calendar constraints, and even found a fellow lifeguarding student to join me.
In addition to all of that personal administrative stuff, I also made myself a mixtape. I have come to see that this audio cassette (Yes. That's how old I am.) is a critical part of the story. I made a mixtape that had "pep up music" on the A-side, and "cool down music" on the B-side. I needed something to inspire me to push hard and sometime to look forward to after I had done so. When the fellow student and I drove over to the pool together on Wednesday nights, we blasted the pep-up music loud and crooned in the car, getting those songs deep into us for the exercise that was ahead. When I lapped -- an utterly solitary activity, with no scenery and no conversation partner -- I drew from the pep-up music "well," stroking to the beats that I could hear in my mind. When she and I left the pool, red-faced with exhaustion, we played the cool down music and savored our accomplishment of a good workout in the pool which was also serving a greater end of learning how to be a lifeguard. All of it mattered -- the dutiful organization and the joyful inspiration and the dogged perspiration. In the end, she and I both passed the exam at the end of the class, and eventually worked as lifeguards.
At times I retrace the contours of this lived experience to figure out how to get out of my own way with studying and writing. I'm learning -- again! ugh! -- how to organize my time (something I do not do effortlessly!), put in the laps of pages and words written (lonely perspiration!), and remember to figure out how to incorporate some joyful routines, liturgies of gearing up and cooling down, and finding satisfaction in beginning the work and (critically) savoring the work I've accomplished.
I'm learning how to "get my laps in" to improve my conditioning as a student and a writer. As a student, I have found that it has helped me to put some of the StrongerMemory tips into practice. That is, I'm reading challenging academic passages out loud and discovering that that particular technique is helping me with comprehension. It's helping me to relax and being relaxed is terrific for our minds. (It's why we have good ideas in the shower, or on walks in nature.) As a writer, I'm practicing typed free-writing, and I'm already seeing an increase in my stamina on it. Practicing that technique of writing is helping me simply "get into the writing pool and put in the laps." The mixtape component remains critical: I put on my headphones, set a sleep timer on my music app, and free write to a pep up playlist. When the music stops, I stop typing and click save and just note how many words I got onto the page. It's something I have to practice, and it's something I get to practice. Learning how is as much as part of the work as learning the what.
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For my fellow writers out there, check these two resources for more on free-writing, one short and one long. Written by the same author, they accomplish different things, replete with rich, fascinating insights, and one doesn't have to read both to benefit from them.
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If you have read Keys to Bonhoeffer's Haus and have not yet reviewed or rated it on Amazon, would you consider doing so? It helps make the book more "discoverable" to others. (I take time to ask also because it's been at 97 reviews for quite some time, and I'd love to nudge it across the "100" mark.) If you have already done so, thank you so much!
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I pray that you will take up the adventure of living that is *yours* and learn how to lap joyfully and fervently and patiently and expectantly in the contours of your life. It matters for all of us that you do.