Zen and the Art of Surviving a Rip Tide

Walking along the beach in beautiful Long Beach Island, NJ at night, stars glowing over head and hypnotized by the waves metronomically crashing along the shore, I started to think about rip tides.

I am not a good swimmer and am fairy uncomfortable in the ocean--In fact my level of discomfort got heightened yesterday when I took my two daughters, ages 6 and 8 in for a dip. Boy, was I really taken aback by how deceivingly calm the waters seemed. In no time we seemed to be bombarded by waves and taken further and further away from the shore line. It wasn't a rip tide, because we managed to get out of it with relative ease...but the experience was so disconcerting that I started to think about the phenomenon of rip tides and how they relate to our lives.

Here's what I learned about rip tides: (some of these facts are taken from popularmechanics.com...funny--but true)

Riptides, or rip currents, are long, narrow bands of water that quickly pull any objects in them away from shore and out to sea. They are dangerous but are relatively easy to escape if you stay calm.

Do not struggle against the current.


Life: How often do difficult and confusing situations bombard us. Sometimes it's in such a profusion that the old saying "when it rains, it pours" seems quite apropos. How often do we feel the need to change the current of unwelcome events--In our effort to control things and get out of the turmoil, we often not only make things worse and aggravate the situation, but also we exhaust ourselves in the process.

Most riptide deaths are not caused by the tides themselves. People often become exhausted struggling against the current, and cannot make it back to shore.

Life: I think sometimes no matter how uncomfortable the place is that we are carried away to by the unwelcome current--it just seems that the best solution is to ride it out and not fight it.

Do not swim toward shore.
You will be fighting the current, and you will lose.


Life: Can we ever really return to square one--? No matter how we might want to go back, we could never retrace our steps in life. We can't get back to the same place on the shore we started from.

Swim parallel to shore, across the current.
Generally speaking, a riptide is less than 100 ft. wide, so swimming beyond it should not be too difficult.

Life: What is interesting about this is how small a riptide is--only a 100 ft, but in the hysteria of the moment, it might as well be 100,000 ft! Just as when we experience the 'emotional riptides' of our lives--they sometimes feel just endless, but really for all we know they are also minuscule--and the bright side maybe just moments away, around the corner--But in the heat of the moment, it's hard to see--We deceive ourselves into thinking that it will last infinitely long.

If you cannot swim out of the riptide, float on your back and allow the riptide to take you away from shore until you are beyond the pull of the current.

Now here's one that completely makes me aghast...Can you imagine--there's a monstrous riptide, pulling you out into the deepest parts of the ocean with nothing to hold onto--its power is overcoming you and depleting your resources;frantically you attempt to fight it-it's a full blown struggle for life or death--

And now in the midst of it all the high-pitched anxiety you're supposed to just nonchalantly flip over on your back--and FLOAT????!!!

It seems impossible, but strangely it's the favored option--To have the Faith that it will work out--To submit to the current....and it will effortlessly drift you back to safety...

...Funny, I always thought that being called a 'drifter' was a bad thing...