How Wild It’s Been
“You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through the car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame”. — Robert M. Persig in “Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”
As the last page of this chapter in South-East Asia turns, I’ve been reflecting on the past eight-and-a-half months since I left my life in Toronto, the ups and downs, the highs and the lows, and the moments of true clarity. Ironically, it took me six months to read “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed, and I finished it the day I decided to book my flight home. Although I read it on and off, the ideas and experiences she had on the Pacific Crest Trail served as a guiding light to understanding what is and isn’t important to me during my time out here.
When you strip down your life to one giant backpack and a loose plan, you find out pretty quickly what you do and don’t give a shit about. The ups and downs have been filled with some of the most loving and some of the loneliest moments of my life, and I’m grateful for all of them. When you need to figure shit out on your own, you grow like you’ve just been conceived.
When I started writing this blog, my purpose was to write about moments of operating against my default settings, but this is the first time I’ll write about how that translates to being underwater. The quote by “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” above also drives home the same point Cheryl Strayed goes for in her last sentence of her book, “How wild it was to just let it be”. While I’ve written about moments like Cheryl had when she finished hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, I’ve neglected moments like these that happen every time I descend below the surface of the sea. Although I’ve given several different answers to the question “So why do you love diving?”, I think I’ve finally found the answer.
If snorkelling or tanning by the beach or pool are vacationing in a car, diving is vacationing on a motorcycle. Nothing I’ve learned in SE Asia is more powerful than what I’ve learned underwater. Leadership, communication, problem solving, awareness, and performing under pressure were skills that were completely redefined and challenged every day when I became a diving instructor. Being under the water itself though may not be like you initially imagine it. It’s not fast and chaotic, it’s actually really quiet and meditative down there. Like riding a motorcycle through open roads or walking hundreds of miles alone through the Pacific Crest Trail, it offers a rare separation from the outside world and is by far the closest you’ll get to experiencing wildlife in its truest form.
Even when I look away from the shore towards the sea, I look at it completely differently now. I look for boat tracks, buoy lines, fishing boats, water colour, and most importantly where the current and waves are moving. I can even dictate by the colour and the way the water moves a small amount about the diving conditions, but the beauty of it is that you’ll only know for sure once you descend.
You truly have no idea what you’ll encounter down there every time you descend because it really is the wild, and the wild doesn’t stop for anyone. Under the surface, there’s nothing special about you; you’re just another creature looking to find its way, and there’s something extremely liberating about that. Even if you’re afraid of sharks or fish, it doesn’t take very long to realize that they don’t give a flying fuck about you!
Coral reefs are home to some of the diverse ecosystems on earth, and the life and death that take place in those ecosystems play out in front of your eyes on every single dive. We as humans are so lucky that we have the brain power to be able to make a difference to conserve these ecosystems, and it may take an experience underwater to realize that. Life started in the water, and you have no idea how much life there really is under there until you see it for yourself. I’ve been lucky enough this year to have been brought to my knees on multiple occasions by the beauty of both people, places, and wildlife, and isn’t that all we really want in this life? I love diving because it does all of this for me, and when I’m down there, I too can just let it be. I think that may even be why many are utterly overwhelmed by their first underwater experience, because it may have been the longest they’ve ever continuously operated against their default settings.
With all this said, I’ve kept a list while abroad over the past year of the important lessons I’ve learned about work and life outside of the water. While some of these may have been the subject of past posts, I really like lists, and this might be my favourite one of all! Without further a due, here’s what living on a remote island and working as a scuba diving instructor has taught me:
If you love something, you have to be willing to suffer for it.
Sometimes things won’t go the way you planned, and sometimes life will throw you a curve ball that completely ruins everything you planned. I’m a planner, and when I first got to Koh Tao, I had a rigid plan for when I needed to be in each phase of where I saw myself as an instructor and diver. From changing dive shops, to my internship running longer than expected, to struggling to find work at times, to working 26 days in a row, I’ve suffered to do what I love far more than expected because I realize that you’ll never be able to do what you love if you aren’t willing to suffer for it.
Your mind loves to remind you where you’re coming up short, but hates admitting where you’ve exceeded expectations.
When things weren’t going right for me in the first two months, I felt like I was coming up short in every facet of life. It wasn’t until I forced myself to write down everything I’d learned and felt over those two months that I began to realize the huge growth that came out of the struggles. Since then, I’ve been doing these check-ins on a monthly basis to reorient my priorities and remember that I’m constantly learning. In the words of Brene Brown, “you’re wired for struggle, but worthy of love and belonging”.
It may take a physical job to teach you how important your body is.
I’ve always been an avid health advocate; diet and exercise have been important to me since I can remember. However, when teaching diving, I got paid based on how much I worked, so always being healthy and ready to work was far more important to me than it’s ever been. If I couldn’t equalize my ears because I didn’t wash them out after every dive, if my sinuses were congested after a long night out, if I injured myself because I was driving my scooter like an idiot, that meant no work and no money. Take care of your body even if you think you don’t have time, end of story. Oh, and also, if you sit at a desk all day, remember how tough your friends who work in trades and more physical jobs actually are.
Respect all, fear none.
As I’ve written before, I’ve struggled with being overly competitive my whole life, but the part setting me back was that I didn’t respect opponents. Then I got dropped into Koh Tao’s giant pool of aspiring dive instructors, where you somehow have to differentiate yourself among everyone else looking for the same work as you with all the same qualifications. This time though, I saw my peers as people to learn from instead of compete against. Yes it may have sucked sometimes when I saw friends and peers getting more work than me, but you can never know for sure until you ask why others are rising above you. You have to do more than just work harder than your peers in the work world, you have to show all the respect but none of the fear, and not be afraid to ask for what you want.
With great autonomy comes great responsibility.
I know that’s not the right quote, but autonomy seems to be the big buzz word that everyone in the business world is after right now, so I’m sticking with the times. Teaching diving comes with a ton of autonomy, which is one of the reasons I believe the instructors love their jobs so much. The most rewarding part of teaching for me is seeing students overcome fears and even sometimes admit that their experience underwater was “life changing”, all while having the freedom to conduct programs without anyone looking over my shoulder. When I look back at the growth in students over just two or three days, it always makes me proud to be an instructor.
However, every instructor has an obligation to teach to the best of their abilities while following the training standards set out by the various agencies and dive centres. The amount of autonomy given to instructors makes it easy to deviate from the standards, and I’ve seen plenty of this. People get set in their ways, they get lazy and maybe even careless sometimes, which you can always spot right away in a poorly trained diver. Every now and then when guiding certified divers, you see someone who clearly was not taught to standards, and it’s not their fault, it’s their instructor’s fault. If you really love what you do and give all of yourself to your divers every day, you won’t break standards.
Invite Mara to tea.
This may seem like a bit of an odd concept, but it comes from “Radical Acceptance” by Tara Brach and its referring to experiencing fear and being okay with it. When the Buddha sat under the Bodhi Tree, he was tempted by the Demon God Mara the night before his enlightenment. Mara tempted the Buddha with everything he had: fear, doubt, anger, lust, etc. but was unsuccessful, because the Buddha acknowledged each attempt by saying “I see you, Mara” and inviting him to tea instead of ignoring or driving him away. He would invite Mara for tea and serve him as an honoured guest.
When Mara visits us, in the form of troubling emotions or fearsome stories, we can say, “I see you, Mara,” and clearly recognize the reality of craving and fear that lives in each human heart. By accepting these experiences with the warmth of compassion, we can offer Mara tea rather than fearfully driving him away. You’d be surprised at how fast you fan offset panic or far just by stopping what you’re doing and breathing, while acknowledging what you’re feeling. As a dive pro, you see quite a generous amount of fear and stress most days. Being underwater and even water in general scares a lot of people and dive programs requires them to overcome fears and doubts, but all I’m really doing as their instructor is asking them to invite Mara to tea. It’s also far more rewarding for those who have to overcome a lot of fear and doubt to learn how to dive versus those who find it easy.
But also, never hide what you’re feeling.
Even more important than expanding comfort zones is knowing where your limit is and being able to say no you’re really not feeling right. A couple of the most important rules I teach is to dive within the limits of your training (ie. if you’re certified to 18m then say no if someone offers to take you to 30m), and remember that you can always cancel a dive without judgement. Some of the best people I’ve taught or guided were the ones that were confident enough to tell me that they were scared or even didn’t want to go diving. To those who were courageous enough to say no, my answer was always “Thank you for having the courage to tell me”.
On the other side, the hardest student I ever taught made everything so hard for themselves because they constantly concealed their feelings. The bigger person will never be the one who forces themselves into something they don’t want to do, because saying no takes far more courage than refusing to do so. It’s okay to not be okay, it’s okay to be vulnerable, and you’ll thank yourself later because the bigger person knows what it feels like to be beyond their limits. Whether you’re diving in bad conditions or completely overwhelmed by the amount of work you have, your instructor or boss should always thank you for knowing when to admit that you’re not okay.
Regretting shit sucks.
On the note of vulnerability, this should be pretty self-explanatory. Whether it’s a asking your boss for a promotion, finally taking a trip that will blow you away, starting your own business, or even admitting you have feelings for someone, being honest with yourself and vulnerable enough to do tough things will make you far better than you are today. Regretting shit sucks man, plain and simple. No risk, no reward.
Don’t forget to make sure you’re always stepping forwards.
While having a job is necessary to meet our basic survival needs, a lot of work becomes an indirect means for trying to win love and respect. Even if we find what we do to be completely meaningless, we still attach our desire for approval to how well we perform. Substitutes such as money and power may drive many including myself at times, but this year I began looking for substitutes that give more meaning to my life. My original plan for the year was to spend six months diving and six months skiing, but that changed fairly fast. Once I realized how seriously I wanted to be a dive pro beyond the base-level substitutes, I began to see the ski season as a step backwards. As much fun as it would be, it doesn’t feel like a step forward right now because it won’t provide the meaning I’m looking for. For what I’m looking to do with my life over the next while now, coming home is the best thing for me and my career.
Understand how precious your dreams are.
A lot of people don’t even dream, so be thankful first all that you have dreams and aspirations. This last year has been a dream come true for me, but I have struggled at times to understand how precious that is. I’ve even at times abused my dream and taken it for granted. For a while, my dream faded into everyday life, and I forgot to protect it because I would rather spend time alone getting high and watching movies. I spent some of my loneliest times this past year wondering why I chose this dream instead of protecting it. It was only when I ran into visa troubles and my dream was nearly taken away that I truly remembered how precious dreams really are. It may take a scare to help you realize it, but do yourself a favour and don’t work your way into that scare.
