“Like many others, I do not feel in perfect harmony with our age and the solitude of diving lulls and stays a deep-rooted dissatisfaction. Down below, where dreams and action move silently forward through the dense waters, side by side, man feels for a moment in tune with life.” -Philippe Diolé- from “Prelude: The Undersea Adventure”
Just about everyone knows who Jacques Coustreau is, the father of undersea exploration, one of the first to use a “Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus” aka SCUBA, the man who introduced thousands of us to the world under the waves and stoked that flame and passion that has taken us into her watery arms. How many of us know who Philippe Diolé was? He was Cousteau’s colleague and dive buddy. He wrote “The Undersea Adventure”, a book full of underwater philosophy, a “literary” journey under the waves. He also co-wrote a lot of books with Cousteau, but “The Undersea Adventure” is no scientific logbook, it is an exploration of what going underwater means to us, and I found myself nodding at almost every paragraph, I knew exactly what he was describing, having felt the same feelings and emotions he describes. If you’re a diver, then you know what he meant when he wrote:
“Once he has broken the surface, the diver who is properly ballasted has no more weight, no more resistance: an aerial softness transports him where he wills. Here the world is sweetness. There is no place in his body, from head to foot, which is not relaxed. It is a pleasure to stretch out, to lie on one’s back and feel the perfect fluency of one’s muscles. Dreams float very slowly up from the sea. Walled in silence and completely alone, the diver begins an interior monologue in the cell of his undreamed-of content.”
How many of us have seen our dreams “…float slowly up from the sea…” while underwater? How many of us meditate and center ourselves underwater? Floating effortlessly, your lungs keeping you weightless, not in the Ocean, but a citizen of the Ocean, not a visitor, but a family member. I don’t know about you, but I always feel like I’m back home when I’m underwater, I’m where I belong, where I feel whole and I’m always a bit bummed when I see my air is low and I’ll have to go back to land, back to the cities, the noise, the people… hmmmm, just call me an underwater hermit. It’s where I belong, and at the end of my run, it’s where I’ll return, back into the sea.
Tags: adventure, diving, scuba, underwater
