THe Health benefits of adventure

Dubious Divers! Graham here.

Last issue I was about to jump off the literal deep end.

A week-long trip to Far North Queensland, learning how to scuba dive.

Ahead of me lay a week of activities, each one perfectly tailored to push all my biggest buttons:

Learning a scary new thing packed with risk to life and limb (check)
Constant socialising (check!)
And of course, hordes of strangers with god-knows-how-many mystery viruses, in airports, on planes, and a tiny boat packed with people (good god check check CHECK!)

Well I have made it back in one piece dear friends. And let me tell you, it was wonderful.

Here’s a little of what I learned…

I’ve been hiding away more than I realised

My biggest fear before this trip was not, in fact, the scuba diving portion of the holiday. My biggest fear was catching COVID again.

For two years, fear of COVID has profoundly shaped my connection to the outside world, more than I’d even realised.

Long after the Melbourne lockdowns ended, I still found myself hurrying in and out of shops, sitting anxiously at social events (the ones I didn’t just turn down altogether). Always one eye (or two) on possible avenues of infection.

Maybe this has been protective, but it’s also been lonely.

And exhausting.

When I said yes to the dive trip, I knew I was saying yes to more than just a holiday. I was saying yes to being more fully in the world again, despite the risks.

Control only goes so far

For the first few days of the trip, this meant constant vigilance. ‘I will take the risk, but only if I can control every aspect of it.’

This meant moving seats in the airport every time someone coughed. It meant wearing one of those fancy N95s with the full head straps that - by the end of my second flight in one day - was digging deep tender lines into my face.

The first two days of dive training were in the classroom, plus a few hours each day in the 5-metre-deep training pool. As it happened, the classroom setting presented an immediate challenge to my ‘control all risk’ strategy.

Within five minutes of arriving, I discovered one of our classmates was “on the last couple days of a cold”, and just about hacking up a lung.

Button, firmly, pressed.

I spent those first two days navigating not only all the new info about How To Not Die Underwater, but also my own private curriculum, How To Not Get Too Close To The Cough. Contriving reasons to switch seats, or to open the classroom door to let some air in.

Control, wherever I could find it.

Sometimes deeper water is the answer

Yet in the days that followed, something shifted. Because it had to.

Each day we’d dive into deeper and deeper water, building our diving skills and confidence.

And in the same way, each day I was thrown into some diabolical new COVID-fear scenario, where my already creaky control strategies would collapse even further.

A boat with 35 people, who’d just flown in from all over the world. No masks, close quarters. How do you control for that?

You don’t.

By the end of 3 days on the boat, I felt like a different person. Every cough, every sniffle - I was aware of them, sure, but I wasn’t overwhelmed by them.

I’d gone into deeper water. And I’d found I was up for more than I’d thought.

I’m pretty sure I *have* actually caught some kind of bug in my travels.

(Of course!)

But even that doesn’t feel like the end of the world right now. I hope it’s not COVID and I’m taking precautions, but there’s also a new feeling of trust here. That whatever it is, it’s a risk worth taking.

(Update: it’s not COVID! Yusss.)

As I said breathlessly to Gareth when I got back, “I feel like I’m back in the world again.”

I’d forgotten how good that can feel.

Belonging doesn’t have to mean hiding

Aside from the COVID risk, my other big fear about the trip was being constantly surrounded by people. Our little group of six, plus many more on a small boat.

When I have a lot going on (so, most of the time?) I spend much of my energy just trying to hide what’s inside. As I wrote about in my book, this makes it hard to feel present in social settings, or like I really belong.

Again, the ‘in the deep end’ nature of this trip proved surprisingly helpful here.

With my COVID fears running rampant early in the trip, I couldn’t hide it. So I didn’t.

On day one, after class I was lamenting the clearly-plague-ridden state of our classmate who had the cold. ‘She’s coughing every two minutes!’ I declared, only for my friend to counter, ‘I think I heard her cough twice all day, Grey.’

But by day 2, that same friend had come around to my way of thinking, and was now half-convinced we’d all get COVID for sure. We joked about how I was the canary in the coal mine — anxious enough that I helped keep everyone else safe.

In this simple affectionate teasing was a profound little nugget of possibility. Maybe I can be welcome here, with all my anxious parts, not in spite of them?

As the trip went on, every cough or sneeze on the boat prompted a conspiratorial look between me and my friends. A look that said, simply, ‘we see you, little canary.’

Finding what’s bigger than me

This last lesson’s a big one, and to be honest I’m still finding the words.

But the short version goes something like…

This trip was a desperately needed reset, I think. A chance to connect with something bigger than me.

To be part of our little group of traveling buddies, on a little adventure.

To be part of a community on the boat - 35 strangers working as one, at least for a few days.

And to connect with the ocean, and its incredible creatures.

So much of modern life presses us further into ourselves. And being on the ‘big feelings’ journey can double down on this feeling - ‘me against the world’. Even the help we are offered is so often focused on working on our ‘self’, as if the locus of both pain and wellbeing is to be found solely in the individual.

Feeling part of something bigger is the difference between seeing those around you as a threat, or seeing yourself and others as all part of a team. In this together (whatever ‘this’ may be).

More on all that soon, but for now I’ll say this. My trip was a potent reminder of what it feels like to be part of something bigger than myself and my everyday worries. To lean on other people, and be leaned on in return. What it feels like to take risks with people I’ve come to trust. And how, in turn, that trust can deepen in the process - going deeper together.

It was a reminder that I can still connect with others, even when it’s scary to do so. Even when it means going right in the deep end.

So, more of that please?

OH AND… I MET NEMO!

THE ACTUAL NEMO FROM THE MOVIE!!

He and his family now have a a lovely little anemone on Flynn Reef.

I didn’t want to pap him too hard so I didn’t get a picture, but we’re basically friends now. NBD.

Inspired by this, the day after the boat trip we actually watched Finding Nemo together. All of us tired and still rocking from three days on a boat, it was a delightfully quiet way to end a big adventure. And you know what? That movie holds up…

— Graham xx