As you likely know,
64-year-old endurance swimmer Diana Nyad just became the first person on record to swim unaided from Cuba to Florida. (For Robin Roberts' interesting interview with Nyad, click here.) She
had tried several times before, beginning in her 20s (shortly after she swam around
Manhattan). More recently, after passing her 60th birthday, she
decided to give it another go. She tried three times over the past few years, but
was stymied by weather, currents, and jellyfish. She said this would be her
last try … although apparently she’s said that before. In any case, she made it.
As she came out of the water,
after 112 miles and 50 straight hours of swimming, she had three messages for
her assembled fans (including the assembled news media, who dutifully passed
her message on to us):
1.
Never, ever give
up (a phrase she credited to abc’s Robin Roberts in the interview linked above)
2.
You’re never too
old to follow your dreams
3.
It looks like a
solitary sport, but it takes a team
In interviews after her swim,
she talked a lot about how being older actually helped her: the concentration,
the patience, the knowledge that you can push through the tough moments. Her
“mantra” as she swam: “Find a way.” She talked about the importance of stepping
back, being committed, and then persisting despite setbacks. It wasn’t the
athletic feat that mattered, she said; it was what it said about “the human
spirit.”
Her messages were inspiring—to
folks of any age, but especially to those of us who might have thought we were
past fulfilling any long-standing dreams. And her insistence that even
endurance swimming, one swimmer in the water for hours and miles, is a team
event—this was also important for me to hear. Now maybe more than ever in my
life, I am aware of how important other people are to my well-being. How life
is a team effort. I learn this regularly from friends who have done a better
job than I of building community. And it is something I am, honestly, working
on at this very moment in my life. More on that later …
Back to Diana Nyad. In
addition to my delight as I followed her last miles to shore (Online, that is. Not
in the water), two other trains of thought drifted through my mind. The first
was something I’ve written about here before: my concern about “bucket lists”—that designated
pile of things we want to be sure to do in our lives. For me—and I know this
isn’t true of everyone—what works better for keeping my life full and vibrant is to
watch for the unexpected opportunities, the things I hadn’t planned that make
me excited and give me a goal, even a fleeting one. I think of things like writing
this blog, joining a bird-watching excursion during raptor migration season, swapping
a sunny hike in the Utah desert for a photo blog of a rainstorm there, spending a week in
New York taking a course in astrophysics, hiking up Storm King Mountain on an
unanticipated pilgrimage.
So, although I have huge respect—and perhaps a dose of
envy—for Diana Nyad’s feat, I do not regret that I’ve had no persistent, focused,
singular lifelong dream like hers. I’ve had dreams, but they’ve been far more amorphous,
and they come true in small ways all the time rather than in one momentous step
from the Gulf onto the shore. That suits me well, although it would likely not
suit her.
And my second train of
thought was this: I am working these days on relinquishing lingering feelings
of loss and regret that come from seeing other (usually younger—Diana Nyad
being close to the exception) people do things that I have done but can’t any
longer or that I just wish I could do. The reality is that there are places I
will likely not see, hikes I can no longer take, academic subjects that I won’t
master in this lifetime, bike trips that are now impossible for me, books I won’t
write. And I’m trying now, with varying but increasing success, to treasure the
wonderful memories I have of the times when I have done those things, or things like
them, rather than getting caught in sadness and regret over the very real
limits to what I will still do in my lifetime.
So, another part of my response to
Diana Nyad’s wonderful achievement was to remind myself that phrases like “You’re
never too old” and “Never give up” do not mean that I am a failure at life if
anything remains undone. I have no absolute bucket list. I’ve had and continue
to have a rich, varied, often surprising life. And that’s enough.
Well, that and being part of
a “team,” which actually is lifelong
wish.
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