Life in the island

Next week June will die and half of the year will be gone. Time goes by and while days seem to never finish, weeks pass so quickly that sometimes I am surprised it is almost July.

Life is good, we have traveled, we have received visits from family and friends, and more are to come. The island treats us well and diving has opened our eyes to a new and fascinating world.

I thought I would feel uncomfortable under water and that is why despite the fact that I wanted to experience the high of diving, I had never considered the idea seriously. Then we got here, my birthday came and Mr. A made plans; suddenly we were in a pool dressed with this funny and heavy equipment, and then in a boat doing a back jump into the ocean. That moment always surprises me.

You see, I always feel kind of lazy and anxious before diving. I’m on the boat, the sun is warm, and then I have to put on the suit, the equipment, booties, gloves, and the heavy tank! While I sit on the side of the boat ready to jump out I always feel the pain of the weight on my back, then I jump and as soon as I touch the water I feel free, weightless, relaxed.

Underwater I literally feel like a fish in the water. It will never stop surprising me how despite you being there fishes seem to keep going with their lives. You are no more as a human the center of the universe; you suddenly become a mere spectator of a world that you don’t rule. You have a limited time to do so, and that is part of the game. If you could stay for ever it might get old, but this way you never have enough.

Underwater life is quiet and slower, your movements adapt to that rhythm and the tiniest little thing becomes the most fascinating you can possible imagine. What a contrast with normal life where nothing surprises us any more, where movement, speed, violence, stress, surround us.

If I could choose I would probably be a fish in my next life, normal with only one condition: a guarantee that I would live in a reef in the Philippines. I don’t want to be one of those sad little goldfishes trapped in a round tank looking at life without really living it, just like I don’t want to become a person trapped in a cubicle in some office, while the world is out there.