Mountaineering and Diving

(photo by bitax)

You are hot and sweaty. You are holding firmly. A mild unpleasantness grips your stomach, and you wonder, once again, what the hack you are doing here.

You jump in, hit the water and immediately feel the wet coldness swallows you, sending shivers throughout your body. Your breath ceases until your body adjusts. You float weightlessly. The water is clear, blue and deep and the colors and shapes dance around you in ever-changing unique patterns. You are surrounded by schools of fish, and you feel one of them. 

You are heavy and tired, your muscles complain whenever you stretch to reach for the next hold. The sun is burning your back, and you know that you must savor your strength to last for the rest of the day. You regulate your breathing, as you have done so many times before,until your muscles relax, casting away tiredness and fear - the fear of the exposure, being so high, secured only by a thin rope, and by the hope that the last anchor you placed can really hold your weight. You take another deep breath and turn away to look into the void, into scenery that as often as you have exposed yourself to, never ceases to fill you with awe. You become weightless, and for a short moment, time and space disappears into the deep void under you. 

Scuba diving and mountaineering; weightlessness against fighting gravity, the gray rock and the dark blue of the deep sea, can any activities be more different? 

And yet, for me they are so much alike. It’s nature and the existence on the fine line between struggle and harmony. It’s total solitude in environments that were not meant for me, and I wasn’t meant for them. It’s the acquired skills that ensure my survival. Skills that have become unnatural second nature, where senses remain sharp and the mind cannot wonder, as any mistake may be my last. Primeval fears and barriers are overcome and the mind transforms, wiping out the mundane. The body follows its path, and the mind, which controls it, sets free. 

Life in its purest form.
Happiness.