Thoughts on Thursday
Many years ago my parents took my sister and I to the keys to swim with the dolphins.
Now, whatever your feelings are about swimming with dolphins, etc, please set them aside for now and go on with my story.
This place had a big a lagoon for the dolphins and people would come in to swim with the dolphins.
Some of the swimming was choreographed and some wasn’t.
There were two dolphins who came to swim with us. One was female and one was male. Now the male dolphin was huge. He was probably at least half again as big as the female.
They were gently swimming with us and taking us back and forth around the pool, doing all the activities we were supposed to be doing with them.
And the male dolphin started getting more playful. When we got to the freeform swimming he would start racing at me and dive under me. And he was playing.
Then we got to the part of the program when the dolphins were taking us across the pool. What you were supposed to so was hang onto the dorsal fin of each dolphin and have them pull you across to the other side. So they took my dad at a decent pace, then my sister at a decent pace and my mom slowly across.
Then it was my turn. I’m getting ready and I put my hand on the fin of the female and as soon as I put my hand on the dorsal fin of the male, he took off as fast as he could go across the pool. I am hanging onto the female and she is falling behind because she can’t keep up. I can barely hang onto the male because he is moving so fast. I am laughing and having a fabulous time. He is pulling me just as fast as he can!
And it was a blast for me!
I realized that everyone else went at a speed that they could handle and the male dolphin KNEW that I could handle that rapid speed AND enjoy it!
I thought, it was kind of like that phrase about life not giving you more than you can handle.
That dolphin KNEW what I could handle. He knew what would be fun for me. I knew that I would be able to hang on and that I would have a blast with him.
And that he would have fun too. He was so in tune with what I could do and be and with what he could do and be and with what we could create together.
So how much of life could be like that if you’d let it.
Some people would have been upset that that was happening to them. That they dolphin was acting up and mistreating them. “Why did the dolphin treat me like that?”
But for me, I could also ask “Why the dolphin treated me like that and let me have so much FUN! That was phenomenal, let’s do it again!”
So I invite you, when things like that show up for you to ask “Is that what I really needed today?” For me, that was what I needed that day, to have an enormous amount of fun. TO allow that dolphin to have fun and for him to create a phenomenal experience for both of us.
Consider this: just because sometimes experience is different than what other people have doesn’t mean that it isn’t exactly what you need or exactly what you and the other person need together.
Talk to you next week.
