Rip Tides and Dragons

How to swim out of fear and frustration so we can get stuff done.

When I was seven or eight, I got caught in a riptide with my mom and my cousin Liz. We had been playing just beyond the break, riding the gentle rise and fall of the troughs and crests of the waves, when suddenly a switch seemed to flip.

I remember feeling safe, and then suddenly I was on high alert. The water underneath us began to churn in great, swirling whirls, and the surface became erratic and choppy. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it. My feet got swept out from under me, my equilibrium upended. I remember the odd sensation of being pulled under and out to sea simultaneously.

Photo by Serena Woodward on Unsplash

We immediately tried swimming back to shore, of course, but we quickly became exhausted. A few people lined up right where the water meets the sand and put their hands to their brows to see us, expressions of concern creasing their far-off faces. Their uneasiness rubbed off on me-I too, began to feel concerned.

A lifeguard ran into the water, just up to his calves, and repeatedly yelled something to us, but we couldn’t hear him. He was emphatically pointing to the right.

I was beginning to panic. I pushed and pushed my little body, willing it forward, but everyone on the beach kept getting smaller.

My mother must have heard the lifeguard, or put something crucial together, because I remember that she shouted something about a rip tide, and how we had to swim parallel to the shore.

“Follow me, girls!” she shouted, and we did, happy to have some direction. I felt my body gaining ground- I was no longer stuck in place. And then I was out of it, just like that, in calm waters. It felt like an exhale, like the moment when a dizzy spell breaks, like hope. It seemed incredible that the churning had stopped as abruptly as it had started. A wave gently pushed at my back, and I rode it towards the shore. My feet touched the sand, and I nearly wept with relief. All three of us stumbled and swam and fell our way onto the shore, limbs akimbo, until we were kneeling on the beach, gentle waves lapping at our legs.

And just like that, we were safe again.

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My daughter started kindergarten this year, and she is learning a great many things. She is so much like me, in that she would like to be very good at everything right away, without having to deal with the messy middle part where you need to actually learn to do the thing and a make a whole bunch of embarrassing mistakes along the way.

Last week, we were drawing together, and she looked at the dragon I had just sketched and asked me to teach her how to draw a dragon, “JUST like that.”

I was a bit apprehensive about this lesson, because she was hungry and tired and has only just figured out how to hold a pencil correctly. Her drawings of people are beginning to have identifiable heads and arms and legs, which is exciting, as I do not get in trouble for mistaking them for tomatoes anymore, but this dragon that she wanted to tackle was quite a bit more complicated than her stick figures.

It didn’t go well.

She ended up screaming in frustration and throwing her pencil across the room and crumpling up her paper and repeating the words, “I can’t do it! I can’t do it! I can’t do it!” over and over again, curled up in a ball, facing away from me.

I’m very familiar with this feeling.

“Do you want to take a break?” I asked gently.

“NO!” she shouted. “I WANT TO DRAW A DRAGON!”

I paused for a long moment, put my hand on her back, and said, “Ok, baby. We can try again. But here’s the deal. We can be frustrated, and we can be smart, but we can’t be frustrated and smart at the same time. So when the frustrated is all gone, we’ll get back to work.”

But first, we had a snack.

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I am convinced that riptides are an inside job, mostly made by fear and anxiety and exhaustion. We try to swim against the strength of them, but it just wears us down and stirs up more panic.

What does it mean to swim out sideways, at this time, in this anxiety-laden landscape? How does one escape the relentless churning, the acid in our bellies that rises up when we start thinking about all the bad things that could happen, and our powerlessness to do anything about it?

I don’t know, friends. I can’t pretend to have the answers, as much as I wish I did. But I think perhaps it’s not as complicated as I want to make it out to be.

The first thing I do is tuck my phone into a drawer somewhere. Having a snack or a glass of water is a good next step. For me, taking a walk helps, preferably somewhere with a big, wide open horizon. Dancing is good medicine, and laughter. Also, hugs- animal or human, it matters not- just make sure to get the recommended dose of twelve a day, we need that now more than ever.

Something I have learned from my little girl is this: when she is coming out of a big, emotional meltdown, she often asks me to tickle her. It’s like she intuitively knows that the giggling will release some of the pent up energy, but that it will also raise her vibration away from despair and into joy. In this way, laughter can be a form of resistance. We get to choose to put fuel on the fire we want to stoke, you see.

Let’s also get creative, ok? We can make art in whatever form we please. (Aside from this writing business, I am cross-stitching a whale. I am nothing if not on-brand. You do you.) A person cannot be in fear and in creativity at the same time, so pick up a paintbrush or sit at your keyboard or your piano and let it rip. Put your joy and your anger into it- both things fuel our creativity, as it turns out- and swim to the side. Let the waves push you to shore, my beautiful, artistic friends, until you can rest and get your feet under you again.

This, I think, is how we let go of those helpless feelings of disempowerment and move towards clarity. And make no mistake: we need to be smart, my friends, so we can go tackle some freaking dragons.

(After her snack, she really nailed it, don't you think?)