Reflection

Yesterday, I had one of those deep and soul searching conversations with a very good friend. We were talking about work, the meaning of life and so on. In the course of the conversation we spoke about what brought us to diving.

In my case, I happened to get into diving by a series of unplanned but fortunate events. I signed up to do the open water class with a number of colleagues at work and just kept on doing classes. For one thing, I really enjoyed being in the water. I feel very comfortable and at home in the water. I think that the reason is that when I was a kid I spent many summer days at the local community pool trying to see how far I could swim underwater. I don't know why I had this desire to swim underwater, but I got fairly good at swimming underwater. However, the idea of SCUBA didn't cross my mind in the least. The closest I got to SCUBA was the fact that there was a small room in the pool complex with the sign "SUB AQUA CLUB" on the door. SCUBA just seemed so far out of reach.

The other factor that caused me to continue the classes was that I found the learning aspect challenging and opened up a whole new world to me. I have always enjoyed science and technology, so when I had to start learning about physiology and physics for diving, I was hooked.

In trying to explain what exactly it was that made me enjoy diving as much as I do, caused me to think about the my motivation and reasons for liking diving. The way I tried to explain it to my friend was to describe a man who walks down the street and unexpectedly finds very valuable article that changes his life. He didn't know the valuable article was there and was not looking for it, but having found it, caused him to experience many new things. I know it is an awkward word picture, but there are elements that are true for me.

My friend's experience was a little different to mine in that she got into diving in a more planned and organized way. She felt that she was not spontaneous enough in her approach to diving. Personally, I don't see her as being all that concrete and structured, but I guess she knows herself best. Everyone is different of course, so I am sure every diver has his or her own story about why they love diving.

The point of this post is that for the first time, I really sat down to think about why I am so passionate about diving and what keeps me so interested in the field.