Just Keep Swimming – Rhonda Hull, Ph.D.

It has been awhile since I sat and watched the wonderful movie, Finding Nemo, with my first grandson. It’s a delight (and so is he, I might add)! Since my return from the birth of my second grandson on October 8th (my first grandson’s birthday!) I have been readjusting to life far from my loved ones, riding the waves that life brings, and preparing my work to travel with me again to the LA area for the birth of my third grandson, due December 10th. Yes it has been a fertile year!

Nemo (a little fish) develops a friendship with an older (and very forgetful) fish, Dora, who is trying to help him find his way home. One of my favorite lines is Dora’s suggested mantra for life when you aren’t certain you are making ‘enough’ progress …”Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming.”

All around me I see everyone racing with the year’s end in sight. People seem to be in turmoil, and anxiety is heightened because change everywhere abounds. Fear, rather than creativity shapes their decisions. We become our harshest critic. We forget that the same amount of information that was taken in over a two year period of time a hundred years ago is what we are challenged to process each and everyday. We think if we ‘swim’ fast enough we will somehow manage to master it all, do it all, and control it all.

Although we manage to accomplish amazing things, we are not human doings. We are human beings! We create a life of ‘do-do’ when we don’t balance it with self-care. The amount of what we accomplish is not as important as the spirit and grace with which we accomplish it. We are amazing simply because we breathe. If at the end of the day you can say you offered your Self with integrity, patience, compassion, creativity and generosity, you are living the life that matters even when there are dust bunnies under the bed or the final report is not done. Happiness just is. The key is in our ability to access it. Life just is, and the joy comes from how we regard it. Love just is, and happiness is ours when we keep it the priority. Our power lies not in controlling and completing, but in being most authentically our self without self-judgment amidst the ocean’s ebb and flow of life.

Few of us probably realize that captured in an old childhood song sung in rounds is all the wisdom and insight we need to live a happier and more fulfilling life.

Row, Row, Row Your Boat