A lesson learned

What could be a better way to finish a summer day than to go for a swim in the sea?

I grabbed my swimsuit and the beach towel from the clothes line and went to sauna's front room. Even though the swim suit was slightly moist from the last swim, I pulled it on, wrapped the towel over my shoulders like a cape and walked down to the seaside. 

I arrived at an old, for decades not in use, falling apart pier built of boulders and some concrete. The concrete had crumbled to pieces and grass had started to grow in between the rocks, the nature taking over the human made structure. Looking to the left and right a rocky shoreline stretched, hemmed with reed and lindens, hiding all nearby households. 

With a bit of careful stepping from a rock to rock, from a boulder to boulder,  I reached a good place on the pier to enter the water. 

When I was climbing down from the pier a family of swans, two adults and two young ones, surprised me. I had usually seen them only from far away, never in our swimming place. 

They were clearly equally surprised by my presence and swam off as soon as they spotted me. 

I started swimming parallel to the pier. I began from waist deep water, swam over a deeper part, paused at a neck deep place and then turned back. The laps were short, less than thirty meters. Perhaps swimming was not the right term to use. This might conjure images of energetic and strong olympic swimmers with mighty strokes and beautiful arm muscles dynamically moving through the water.  I was more like a short legged frog with a head above the water leisurely floating back and forth.

With the setting sun, the beautiful seaside and the swans a bit further away I thought of the idea of inter-being. I was the sea, the sun and the swans. So romantic. So picturesque. So peaceful. My life felt perfect. I felt perfect. 

One more lap perhaps? Sure. 

The swans started swimming back towards the pier. 

A slightly strange and disturbing feeling ran through my stomach. 

Suddenly, as I was on my way back, one of the adults began to speed. No kidding. It aimed it's direction straight at me like a torpedo. And, oh my, how fast it moved.

I did my best to speed up, but the water bird clearly had an advantage. 

It took only a few seconds for the bird to be almost at my toes. It spread its wings and opened its peak and at first hissed and then hoarsely croaked at me. When you look up at the bird form the water level, it looks enormous and the beak looks deadly.

My heart ponded, my legs kicked and arms pulled, and my thoughts raced. I tried to touch the bottom with my toes but the water was still too deep. The swan continued hissing and croaking. 

"Impermanence" was a word that entered my mind. "Being pecked unconscious by a swan and then drowning might be the most stupidest death" was my next thought.  

I turned my head and yelled back at the swan and splashed water at it. As ridiculous as it felt, at least it slowed it down for a moment, and I reached the place to stand up and from there to plough through the water, with each step my body emerging to the surface, and escape to the shore.  

The swans, finding they had clearly showed who was the boss, swam calmly where I had been just a minute ago. 

I could imagine the conversation the family had had. Observing me, with my body under the water they only saw a round ball of a head with a little bun of a hair and must have thought I was this over eaten spherical duck or something. And then the kids started whining, "How long do we have to swim here? I want to return," and the wife nagged, "Are you going to do something about it or what?" and the dad decided to show how macho he was. Or perhaps the mom said, "This is outrageous, how dare she swim here, I'm going to tell what I think of her," and swam to put me in place. 

Every situation can teach us something. Usually it's possible to find a metaphorical larger scale life-lesson.

My head was not capable nor interested in deep discoveries.

The lesson I learned was: Don't swim with the swans.