Well, ladies
This is a confession. I have had a documentary sitting in my watch list for three weeks and I kept opening it, watching about twelve minutes, and then closing it and telling myself I would finish it later.
The film is about a woman in her fifties who swims in open water alone, early morning, in Scotland. It is quiet. There is not much narration. Mostly it is just her walking to the water, getting in, swimming, getting out, walking home. The cinematography is beautiful in the way that makes you feel cold and calm at the same time.
I kept stopping it because something about watching her do this thing alone, in the cold, on purpose, by choice, made me feel like I was being asked a question I did not want to answer. ☕
The question, if I am honest, was: when was the last time I did something uncomfortable just because I wanted to, not because someone told me to or because it was good for me or because there was a result at the other end of it. Just because I decided to.
I found out about Dani's Wednesday night from Clare, not from Dani, which is its own small thing I am still sitting with. I am not angry. I think I am a little hurt, and I think instead of saying that to either of them I will just quietly carry it around for six days and then pretend it never happened, which is exactly the kind of thing I do and exactly the kind of thing I am tired of doing. I noticed it. I am leaving it here. 🤍
The documentary. I finished it Thursday night. The woman never explains why she swims. No voiceover about healing. No before and after. She just keeps going to the water because that is what she does and she does not appear to need anyone to understand it.
There is a scene near the end where she sits on the rocks after a swim with her eyes closed and you can hear the water and a bird and something mechanical far away, maybe a boat, and she is just listening. Not meditating. Not performing stillness. Just sitting with wet hair and her eyes closed, hearing what is there.
I tried it Friday morning on the porch. Not the swimming. The listening. I closed my eyes and picked one sound, a neighbor's wind chime, and I followed it until it stopped. Maybe twenty seconds. And when I opened my eyes, something in my chest had loosened that I did not know was tight.
This is real and it is not just emotional. When you close your eyes and track a single sound to its end, your auditory system narrows its focus and your breathing rate drops to match. The sustained attention on something external pulls your nervous system out of the internal loop it has been running. It is the same mechanism behind why nature sounds lower cortisol, but you do not need a forest. You need one sound and twenty seconds.
Close your eyes right now. Pick a sound. Follow it until it finishes or fades. That is it.
I am going to text Dani today. Not about Wednesday. About the documentary. She will probably tell me cold water swimming is just cold exposure with better marketing, and she will probably be half right, and I will probably not say that. ✨
But I watched a woman choose discomfort with no audience, and it made me want to be a little braver about the small things I keep avoiding. Starting with the text. Maybe.
