BREATHING UNDER WATER
Cindy Maddera
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There's song by Metric that I really like. The lyrics go "Is this my life? Ahhhh. Or am I breathing underwater?" I'm not really sure of how this song is interpreted or what Metric's intentions for the song' meaning are, but I hear it and I think of the disillusion of growing older. Those lines in the song always bring to mind the daily grind of life, all those things we need to do on a daily basis like work and school and how that endless loop of things lulls us into this zoned robotic state of mind. That's the breathing underwater part. Everything slows down underwater sure, but lack of gravity makes everything more challenging. So challenging in fact that sometimes all you can do is focus on trying to breath. The idea of weightlessness seems pretty nice until you have to force your limbs to move. When Emily Haines belts out "is this my life?", I hear a hint of disappointment. It's a question of what am I doing here? Am I living this life? Or am I just existing in this life?
I've just been existing lately. It's easier for me to do during the colder months around here. I am a sunshine weather girl. Except now that I think about it and look back on those sunshine weather moments, I'm not so sure I really took advantage of them. I've stalled out and fallen victim to my own attachment to routine. I'm left sitting here asking myself "is this my life?" in the way a high school football coach yells at his team "do you wanna win?" Yes! This is my life Yes! I wanna win! Fight! Fight! Fight! The inner coach is yelling back at me "Then get your ass up and live it! Now get out there and win!" And I know I've done entries this past year where I've talked about being in the rut of routine. 2014, the year of the rut and I mean the not fun definition of the word rut.
I've never been big on making New Year resolutions. Sure I want a lot of things for this year, but it's OK if some of that rolls right on over into the next year and the year after that and so on. I don't want to be healthy just for this year. Getting "in shape" is not something you do once. It's more like brushing your teeth. Which should be done every day. Weekends are an exception. So for me to make a resolution that I will fill in the blank for 2015 just limits me to this year. But I will make a resolution not just for 2015, but the years to come that I will do less passive living and more active living. That's going to take some practice. Passive living has gotten kind of comfortable. I've gotten used to the raspy Darth Vader sound of breathing underwater. But even I know that those tanks of oxygen don't last forever. I can come up for air or drown.