New Perspectives...

            Last week I changed swimming pools. This is not earth shattering news and yet it has given me a fresh outlook on my best exercise and my life in general.  For almost 3 years I have been going to the one pool at the YMCA in south Asheville, an impressive new facility with big windows overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains and Biltmore Park residential community.

 Lately I hadn't been looking forward to swimming as I used to.  In order to get a lap lane I was going earlier and earlier in the mornings before the aquatics classes or children’s swim lessons took over half the swimming pool. In truth, it began to feel like a chore.  Art, who switched to the downtown Asheville YMCA for his workouts a year ago, kept bringing home the pool schedules and talking about the two swimming pools (one for lap swimming only), the larger locker rooms and the fact that it is the same distance to go downtown as to south Asheville.  Why don’t I try the downtown YMCA, he urged. I was used to the south Asheville YMCA, I would reply.  Last week I changed and I wondered why it took me so long.

Swimming is my preferred exercise because I don’t like to sweat and because it centers me mentally and physically. I began swimming twenty years ago when we moved to Manila, Philippines. The heat and humidity living on the Equator meant I couldn’t walk a city block without feeling sweaty and miserable.  The five-star Mandarin Oriental Hotel across the street from our gated “ Urdaneta Village” community offered pool memberships.   I joined out of necessity. In the beginning I couldn’t swim one length of the pool without stopping.  Eventually I grew stronger, added laps, and learned that swimming helped me cope with life in a difficult and complex culture. When we left Manila to return to the U.S. I missed the swimming but had no access to a pool in rural Vermont.

 Twelve years later we moved to Dubai with a climate my fair skinned body did not tolerate. We lived in a large elegant complex of apartment buildings that boasted 36 swimming pools.   After  years of not swimming at all I’d get up eagerly before the full desert heat of the day and swim laps remembering how it had saved my life while in Manila.

Now, living in Asheville I can go to the YMCA for swimming not to escape the heat but simply to feel good.  I have worked my way up to 50 lengths of the pool and could do more if I pushed myself. Not only does swimming laps feel good, it is the time when I do my best thinking. Ideas I’ve been mulling over, plans or solutions to small or large problems are resolved while I swim.  “Swimming is the ultimate form of sensory deprivation,” Diana Nyad was quoted in a New York Times article entitled “The Self Reflecting Pool” by Bonnie Tsui. “ It is one of the rare times when we can be totally disconnected and alone with our thoughts. Swimming is a total cleansing of mind and body. The reflection of where you are: in essence, a status update to you, and only you,” writes Ms. Tsui.

While I was at the downtown YMCA last week going up and down the half empty lap pool I was struck by the logical conclusion that had evaded me. I now could continue to swim in a more relaxed environment and perhaps start to explore more of downtown Asheville afterwards.  After all, I spent three years doing my errands in south Asheville but now I can easily go to Pack Square Main Library, stop at Trader Joe’s anytime I like, go by City Bakery for their delicious whole wheat seeded baguettes and an occasional coffee, or pop into the Asheville Mall when I need something without driving to the “other side” of Asheville. I should explore the Asheville Art Museum and maybe even “do” the Thomas Wolfe Museum, or meet a friend somewhere for lunch.  Changing swimming pools has given me a new perspective on things to do in Asheville.

Finishing my 40^th length of the pool the other day, my mind was suddenly flooded with other small changes I could make just to keep life from falling into routine. And so I came home and rearranged my closet in a new way. I found some things I’d forgotten I had, which was like having something new to wear. We hung our one large Vermont wood cut painting of contented cows in a field over our bed having moved it from an upstairs guest room.  It looks like we purchased a new painting for that spot. In truth, we bought the painting 25 years ago.  All of this is to confirm that swimming is when I do my clearest thinking without interruptions. My world seems to fall into place when I emerge from the water. Life is  full of new possibilities and change brings new perspectives.