"A Day At The Beach" Dan Keusal 's e-newsletter Summer 2011 edition

For several years in a row while I was a young boy, my family took summer vacations on the Delaware shore. I remember my first glimpse of the ocean, the way I felt both drawn to it and a little frightened by it. As my father and siblings and I ventured out into the waves, we would try to jump over them, to rise up above them, sometimes succeeding, sometimes getting knocked down and rolled around in the undertow.

I remember the first time I saw a stranger do something different as a particularly large and threatening wave approached: they dove down into it. At first this seemed counter-intuitive, but then I tried it myself. Yes, I had to hold my breath long enough for the wave to pass above me, and there was the fear that I would not be able to find air when I tried to come up again. But I discovered that while these waves were often tumultuous on the surface, they were calmer and more readily navigated when I made the effort to go deeper, to go into them and through them rather than over them.

Many people come to me for psychotherapy because they've been knocked down trying to jump over some of the bigger "waves" in their life, and they've come away with some painful scrapes and bruises. They see the next waves forming on the horizon, and they are frightened. They want to know how to jump even higher, hoping they can rise above whatever is coming their way.

Sometimes, that's all they need: a little support and encouragement in rising above the waves where that approach is enough. But most of the time, our work involves helping them learn to stay calm, to draw a deep breath, and to dive in and move through whatever life, in the wisdom and rhythms of its own currents, is throwing at them.

I remind them of Antonio Machado's simple four-line poem:

     "Mankind owns four things
     that are no good at sea:
     rudder, anchor, oars,
     and the fear of going down."

It takes some time to make peace with that "fear of going down," but those who do often begin to find a deeper, calmer relationship with the currents of their life, as diving down and then coming up for air become as natural as inhaling and exhaling. Those who stay with the process even longer may discover something else entirely, something akin to the capacity to breathe underwater, opening up for them a world in the oceanic depths that is infinitely more vast, wondrous, and full of life than the one on the surface.

Two movies come to mind that illustrate this process. The first is Ron Howard's 1984 romantic comedy "Splash," starring Tom Hanks (pay special attention to the last scene, just before and during the credits). The other is Jame's Cameron's 1989 underwater epic "The Abyss," starring Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (watch for the scene where Mastrantonio's character chooses to drown, and the one where Harris's character chooses to make a dive he believes will be "a one-way trip"). Both films are flawed, and are very different from each other in tone, but they each have a few moments that rise to the level of "cinema-therapy," and that show the possibilities that open up when we are willing to "dive in."

Nearly four decades after diving into my first wave, I still struggle with the inclination to try and rise above it all, with the part of me that chooses to get knocked down and rolled around rather than face my fear of going deep, going under, going through. But I've come through enough waves, and glimpsed enough of that deeper world to know I want to try and live my life there, rather than on the surface.

I'm determined to keep at it. And to support others who are ready to take the plunge. Who knows what we may find...

                                         ~Dan