Cyberstrategics

Today I woke up late, around 4:30pm. After catching up on my Internet reading, I decided to go for a swim. I looked out the window of the 17th floor, and it was gloomy with heavy dark clouds approaching, so I wondered to myself if I would be able to swim.

When I arrived by the pool, I was greated by a young Thai man who stood next to me as we looked at the dark sky. He remarked it will rain hard soon, had been cloudy for three days, and the pool water was cool. We stood in silence and surveyed the skies. I walked over and swished my foot in the water. Yes, it was cool but not cold. It began to sprinkle rain. I decided to swim, after all the pool is wet, why be troubled by rain.

My swimming began as normal, and slowly, the rain came. I noticed how the rain drops seemed to bounce off the surface of the pool as they hit the water and laughed to myself how the splashing of water gives the illusion of bouncing rain drops. After a few minutes, the rain stopped and I felt odd, as if a good friend had left me.

Into my swimming, the rain started again, this time more intense than before, and I noticed how beautiful the rain was as it spashed on the surface of the pool. The rain made beautiful splash patterns on the surface and no pattern looked like the other. I was completely amazed by the beauty of the meeting of two waters and thought how I should watch this more carefully.

As I watched the rain bouncing off the surface of the pool, I noticed that the intensity of the rain was always changing and it was never really constant. There were always slight variations in how much rain was falling and that naturally effected the lovely patterns that surrounded.

I wanted to observe this more carefully, and noticed my mind was noisy from all the normal things in our lives. There were thoughts of event processing, and blogging, and unix, and the hotel, and the stress of Thailand, and some small annoyance with two young Arab men talking at the top of their voices at pool side.

I noticed that all these thoughts were keeping me from being fully aware of the beauty of the rain upon the surface of the pool, so I worked to calm these thoughts in my mind and tried to observe the rain patterns more carefully. I swam more and more slowly. The rain intensified greatly and I noticed that when the rain is very heavy, a mist of small water droplets form above the surface of the pool based on the intensity of the rain. Most of the time this extra mist above the water was around 4 or 5 inches tall and it created a new beauty to behold.

As my swimming slowed, I noticed the beautiful patterns underneath the surface looking up at where the rain met the pool water. This caused me to swim even more slowly and I tried to notice every moment, every angle, every pattern, every intensity, every change in my rainy blue water surroundings.

I thought that life is so unfair to all of us, how we rush around, worrying about the past, worrying about ourselves, worrying about appearances, worrying about the future and trying to influence much of our surroundings, in a life of frustration and unrealized dreams. Yet, at this moment, swimming slowly, observing the patterns, the beauty as slowly as possible, I saw a great happiness. This peacefulness, understanding and happiness from swimming and observing the rain and the surface of the pool was pure bliss.

After swimming 1km in this state of observation, I noticed how little we really know about our surroundings, including nature and all the wonders and beauty of it. We swim but we don’t know swimming. We don’t know the water, we don’t know the rain, we don’t know the surface, we don’t comprehend how and why of all the beauty that surrounds us.

Resting at the end of my first 1000 meters, having a bit of cold tasty sports drink, I noticed the intensity of the rain had decreased and, at the same time, saw that the energy of all around me had also decreased. The change in water surface energy was another beauty to behold, and I began to swim again.

Luckily it continued to rain, again more stronger, and I was swimming ever so slowly and watching each stroke, each movement, each ripple, each surface pattern under the surface, at the surface and above the surface, within each cycle of a completed breast stroke.

At the end of my swim, I relaxed with my sports drink and watched the light rain making patterns along the water in the puddles next to the pool, the same water that had created a small current and floated my flip-flops away. Then, I saw what I first observed as random patterns of rain on the surface of the puddles.

After a few moments of keen observation, I noticed that the patterns of rain on the surface of the water were not random at all. What I was observing as random patterns was just my own inability to understand the clouds, the wind, the water and all the delicate physics, science and mathematics that bind all of this beauty into a package I was fortunate to observe.

It was then I saw that what we perceive as random is actually only our lack of consciousness of the small details of life, the very things we miss in our everyday world of running here and there and everywhere. At that moment, I decided to give up my life of bliss and enlightened state of mind and enjoy the dry sauna.

There is so much more to life than what causually meets the eye; but life seems to revolve around such a casual and superficial worldview..

Filed under: Off Topic