If you can remember when you learned to swim you may also recall a time, before you’d got the hang of it, when you were afraid of sinking (if you have never been able to swim you might want to hold onto the side while you read this). What I learned when I started to swim is that it’s largely a question of trust and developing confidence.

Swimming does not just require a complex and coordinated set of physical skills, it is also about one’s relationship with water. How we interact with the medium that supports us determines whether we sink, or swim. The water and our natural buoyancy are a big part of the equation.

So it is with life. In participating we are interacting with the milieu in which we find ourselves. If we struggle against it all our effort has to go into staying afloat, but if we accept and trust our natural inclination is to rise to the surface, then we can go with the flow. This less of a strain and is usually more enjoyable.

Even those who can’t swim are able to come up for air more easily when they can learn to trust in their natural buoyancy.