Swimming Against The Current Quotes

I let it go. It's like swimming against the current. It exhausts you. After a while, whoever you are, you just have to let go, and the river brings you home.

Fate is never fair. You are caught in a current much stronger than you are; struggle against it and you'll drown not just yourself but those who try to save you. Swim with it. and you'll survive

Swimming against the current is not idiotic if the waters are racing toward a waterfall.

...most men and women will yield to the strong currents sucking them into the seas of ruin. Only the strongest in mind and spirit will swim against that current.

Doubt is like a current you have to swim against, one that saps your strength.

It was like swimming against a current that swept you backwards however hard you struggled, and then suddenly deciding to turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. Nothing had changed except your own attitude: the predestined thing happened in any case.

Time is a river, I've learned. Always moving forward. But for people like me, people who have loved and lost, the river is something we fight. We swim against the current, trying to get back to the way we once were, trying to hold onto anything to keep us from getting swept away. It's exhausting and eventually we tire. Still we push on.

Those are some strong currents you're swimming against.

But the truth is that the heart’s desire is a mere current against the tide of nurture and nature. You can spend your whole life swimming against it and eventually you’ll get tired and the current of genes and upbringing will pull you under.

This is the Kitsen Unity Ship Swims Against the Current in a Stream Reflecting the Sun,

Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone.

To reach the source, you have to swim against the current. Only trash swims downstream

Shankar Vedantam wrote that those who travel with the current will always feel they are good swimmers, while those who swim against the current may never realize they are better swimmers than they imagine,

Lies are easy, but trust is hard. Trust is like faith: it can turn people into believers, but every time it's lost, trust becomes harder and harder to win back. And doubt, Da warned, is like a current you have to swim against, one that saps your strength.

Things take care of themselves  as long as you trust and don't try to control too much. Things will happen. Things tend to occur. Why resist what's inevitable? That's like swimming against the current, salmon notwithstanding. Go with the flow, you know? Glide with the glow, man. It's easier.

I am still someone who has been swimming against the current for a long time and who is waiting to find that flow where he will feel carried, where he will regain his breathing and his fresh muscles. I’m waiting for the tide. — Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, August 30, 1948 [#37]

I think of the turtles swimming steadily against the current all the way to Ascension. I think of them swimming through all that golden-green water over the dark, over the chill of the deeps and the jaws of the dark. And I think of the sun over the water, the sun through the water, the eye holding the sun, being held by it with no thought and only the rhythm of the going, the steady wing-strokes of the flippers in the water. Then it doesn’t seen hard to believe. It seems the only way to do it, the only way in fact to be: swimming, swimming, the eye held by the sun, no sharks in the mind, nothing in the mind.

But you must keep your head above the waves. It’s so difficult, but you are tough. Even if you don’t feel it at the time, the very fact that you’re still breathing in and out means you’re fighting back against the tide that wants to sweep you away. Don’t let it. After a while I promise it will become easier to tread water, and finally you’ll learn to swim against the current. The friction you’ll face will build your muscles, bones, and sinew—the very fabric of your being will be shaped by this journey. The toughest one you’ve ever taken, surely . . . but you will become something greater because of it. You have to. Otherwise, what was the point?

To become happier, wiser, and more loving, sometimes you have to swim against ancient currents within your nervous system. For example, in some ways the three pillars of practice are unnatural: virtue restrains emotional reactions that worked well on the Serengeti, mindfulness decreases external vigilance, and wisdom cuts through beliefs that once helped us survive.

Who do you see when you think of you? Are you an outsider, Cool, distant, angry, swimming against the current, or are you in the flow? When they tell you, This is who you are, do you say yes or no? Who do you see when you look beyond the skin and the surface, when you drift to sleep, when you are the person no one else knows? Who are you on the inside? Don't answer these questions. Not yet. First, open your eyes, your mind, your heart. See.

To think otherwise than our contemporaries think is somehow illegitimate and disturbing; it is even indecent, morbid or blasphemous, and therefore socially dangerous for the individual. He is stupidly swimming against the social current.

My jaw tightened. “You mean to tell me any man can walk into our locker room?” He said nothing, avoiding eye contact. Just a few years ago, if a man walked in the women’s locker room, he would be arrested and thrown in jail and thought of as a sexual predator.

The salmon swims against the current simply because he wants to be like the others.

Success is always more likely when you are swimming with the current rather than against it.

Swimming against strong currents is how you prove you are a great swimmer.

It is always more difficult for the people who swim against the current, Sophia

We don’t want to swim against cosmic currents, do we?

There are two ways to live your life, Page. You can live your life swimming against the current, exhausting yourself. Or you can live your life being carried by life itself, sailing with the wind, being pulled toward every new day instead of running from every day that's past. Death-centered or life-centered. You have always been the been the former, but now, I don't know, you sound different.

You're trying to swim upstream against the current. What is there about the natural flow of the river of life that has shocked you so strongly that you should want to swim against the current, even against time? You ought to know you're lost even before you begin. I don't understand you but I love you and I suppose you are obeying the law of your being.

Author compares the impact of biases to his experience as an average swimmer who overcame a considerable fear of water. While the swimming was easy in one particular experience, he was internally congratulating himself on his acquired skill. But when he realized he was swimming with a current he would now have to fight against, he realized just how definite his limits were.

It’s not a threat. It’s simply fact. He is Greek and of a bloodline nearly as old as yours. He is required to be what he was made to be whether he wishes it or not. He swims against the current, Ari. He thinks he can outrun his fate. He cannot. No one can.

I believe being forced to use preferred pronouns promotes reality distortion and a lack of basic respect for biology. Since I started advocating for women’s sex-based rights, I began to realize that even when I tried to be what I thought was kind and inclusive and used preferred pronouns, it wasn’t enough. Unless we undoubtedly believed men could turn into women and experience all the same things women do while not daring to question it, then you were showcasing transphobia. I was fully embracing fiction in the guise of showing respect.

But the truth is that the heart’s desire is a mere current against the tide of nurture and nature. You can spend your whole life swimming against it and eventually you’ll get tired and the current of genes and upbringing will pull you under. I became a lot like her and a little bit like me.

When you attempt to multi-task, your focus, attention, and energy is spent switching between your tasks and re-orienting yourself to exactly where you were before you switched. It’s like swimming against the current. Every time you take a stroke, you might only get one quarter of a stroke forward because of the current, and sometimes you might even go backwards despite your best efforts.   It’s an inefficient use of your time that ends up in your becoming well-versed in the beginning stages of many tasks, but never quite seeing them to completion.   The better approach is to be willfully ignorant of everything else you need to do, while giving full attention to one task at a time. In a sense, a lumberjack can only chop the tree in front of him or her, and can’t do anything with a bunch of half-chopped trees. Chopping the tree in front of you will allow you to make better progress on everything more than actively working on it while multi-tasking.

With the sound of waves outside, the bed seemed like our own Guld and we were swimmers. Front to front, out bodies slicked with sweat, each swimming and stroking, one against the other. We rode the waves to the crests, then plummeted down, only to ride the wave to the next breaker. We swam against the current that threatened to pull us under.

I am like the salmon- i have to swim against the current- i have to.

The simplest way to lose your soul is to go with the flow because the flow is naturally down. Only live fish can swim against the current. Dead ones just conform to it.

Ollie had taught me how to save myself, but this time, I was drowning, and I didn’t have the strength to swim against the current of the pain.

a salmon swimming upstream, thrashing against a strong current in hopes of returning to—against all odds—the creek in which he was born.

I remained standing in the middle of the room, swaying on my feet as though I had received a blow. I thought of my life and saw what it had been. No one could swim against such a current of mud. I had been a man so horrible that he could have no friend. But wasn't that, I asked myself, because I had always been incapable of wearing a disguise? If all men went through life with unmasked faces, as I had done for half a century, one might be surprised to find how little difference there was between them. But, in fact, no one lives with his face uncovered, no one. Most men ape greatness or nobility. Though they do not know it, they conform to certain fixed types, literary or other. This the saints know, and they hate and despise themselves because they see themselves with unclouded eyes. I should not have been so universally condemned had I not been so defenseless, so open, and so naked.

Is that how it goes with writing? That as long as you are writing, no time is ever completely in the past? Is this the fate that befalls all writers--to flow backward, in present tense, into a time of pain, like a salmon migrating upstream, swimming against the current back to where it started, struggling through waterfalls, carrying a deep wound inside its belly, risking its own life. It returns, taking the same route back, tracking its own trail, travelling that singular path.

Unconscious bias influences our lives in exactly the same manner as that undercurrent that took me out so far that day. When undercurrents aid us … we are invariably unconscious of them. We never credit the undercurrent for carrying us so swiftly; we credit ourselves, our talents, our skills. I was completely sure that it was my swimming ability that was carrying me out so swiftly that day. It did not matter that I knew in my heart that I was a very average swimmer, it did not matter that I knew that I should have worn a life jacket and flippers. On the way out, the idea of humility never occurred to me. It was only at the moment I turned back, when I had to go against the current, that I even realized the current existed.

Recognizing that chronic childhood stress leads to chronic adult illness and relationship challenges can be enormously freeing. If you have been wondering why you’ve been struggling a little too hard for a little too long with your emotional and physical well-being—feeling as if you’ve been swimming against some invisible current that never ceases—this aha can come as a welcome relief. Finally, you can see the current. And you see how it’s been working steadily against you all of your life.

I kicked off my shoes and moved in knee-deep. The shock of cold water stole my breath. Cole was dark from the sun, his yellow hair like parched grass. He cocked his head to the side like my grandpop used to do; I swear it’s a gesture taught to all farm boys who plan on growing up to make trouble. I fought to stand my ground against the current pushing at the backs of my legs. “Can’t you swim?” Cole had asked. “I learned in this creek. They threw me in and I declined the opportunity to drown.

Superpowers follow passions. Careers where you’re mostly working within your passions are careers where you are more likely to be happy, fulfilled, and super powerful. You want a job where being your natural self sets you up for success. Conversely, if you find yourself in a job that relies on core skills that don’t feel fun or innate to you, you’re going to feel like you’re swimming against the current all the time. It won’t set you or your work up for success. Knowing your superpowers is mostly about knowing what you love.

My teammates and I cut wide eyes with each other, not really understanding our emotions in that moment. Of course, we felt awkward, embarrassed, and uncomfortable. I remember specifically feeling betrayed. I thought of how our privacy as females had been entirely dismissed, violated, and ignored. There was no thought to how we would respond or how uncomfortable a male sharing this changing space with us would make us feel. It felt like we were pawns in a sick game catering to the male who claimed our identity but didn’t have the same physiology, anatomy, or chromosomes, to name a few… I desperately wanted to call my mom and dad and tell them of this situation in hopes they would reassure me that I wasn’t crazy in experiencing this as a total violation of our rights to privacy as women.

Time is a river, I’ve learned. Always moving forward. But for people like me, people who have loved and lost, the river is something we fight. We swim against the current, trying to get back to the way we once were, trying to hold onto anything to keep us from getting swept away.

Life is like the river. It flows on, never stopping.” “So?” She looked at him sharply. “Let the current carry you.” “What does that mean?” “Accept what you can’t change,” he mewed. “The river is far stronger than you. Don’t resist the current. Don’t swim against it. Use its power to lift you and guide you.

Time is a river, I’ve learned. Always moving forward. But for people like me, people who have loved and lost, the river is something we fight. We swim against the current, trying to get back to the way we once were, trying to hold onto anything to keep us from getting swept away. It’s exhausting and eventually we tire. Still we push on.

A few months later, in honor of Women’s History Month, ESPN released a special on Thomas. Of all the female athletes who could have been chosen, someone who was not even born a female was handpicked. These actions are regressive and misogynistic. No female swimmer was honored during this Women’s History Month special by ESPN. Only Thomas.

Christians agree that when we sell and market, we need to show potential customers that a product “adds value” to their lives. That doesn’t mean it can give them a life. But because Christians have a deeper understanding of human well-being, we will often find ourselves swimming against the very strong currents of the corporate idols of our culture.

If you look closer, if you go slowly, there can be story even without progress or plot, life in small change, like Dante and Beatrice, like fish swimming hard against the current just to stay where they are. They’re not getting anywhere, neither Dante nor the fish, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t effort, growth, triumph, and beautiful poetry. Trust me, stasis is challenging. And challenge is story.

Her knock was wimpier than she meant it to be—so wimpy that there was a second where she wasn’t sure if Keefe had actually heard her. But then he called out, “Back to nag me already? You seriously need to get yourself a hobby. I hear spelunking’s fun. Oooh, or you could try swimming with the krakens! I doubt they’d eat you—but maybe we’ll get lucky!” Which wasn’t exactly a “come in.” But Sophie still grabbed the silver handle and turned it—realizing only as she was yanking the door open that she should’ve made sure Keefe was dressed before she barged in. Thankfully, he was. Mostly… He lay sprawled across a huge bed that rested on a pedestal made of lacy bleached coral, wearing fuzzy blue pajama bottoms covered in tiny black gremlins, with his head propped against a familiar green gulon stuffed animal. “Foster?” he asked, jolting upright—which only drew more attention to the fact that he was currently shirtless. He crossed his arms, his cheeks flushing with a hint of pink when his ice blue eyes focused on her. “I… um… what are you doing here?” Ro snickered from the corner, where she lounged on a cushioned chaise, painting her claws the same purple she must have recently dyed the ends of her choppy pink pigtails. “Smooth, Lord Hunkyhair. Smooooooooooooooooooth

I would find out later that Kylee Alons of North Carolina State University, who is a 31x All-American, was so uncomfortable at having to share a locker room with a naked male, she changed in a storage closet. Kylee, NC State’s most decorated swimmer of all time, admitted to being constantly on edge whenever she had to go to the locker room. Knowing Thomas could walk in at any given moment, she always had a towel and parka nearby.

Over the years, I've moved through alternating cycles of personal neglect and nourishment. Sometimes it's just easier to give in and allow my life to become utterly consumed by the menial and trivial than to justify or assert my individual needs. Then, disgusted with my malaise, I rise up, spurred to action by a resurgence of energy, determined to find new ways of incorporating creative expression into my life without upsetting the domestic applecart. Like a salmon's impulse to swim upstream, the urge to improve my mind and keep my brain stimulated with fresh experiences and challenges seems innate, almost primal. Struggling for my inner life, I know I must keep oxygen flowing through my intellectual gills or I will die. Pushing against stagnation and opposing currents, I swim for mental survival, obsessed with reaching some instinctual goal and preserving my sanity.

She has seen neighbouring women do it, has heard their cries rise into screams, smelt the rusty coin scent of new birth. She has seen the pig, the cow, the ewes birth their young; she has been the one called on by her father, by Bartholomew, when lambs were stuck. Her female fingers, slender, tapered, were required to enter that narrow, heated, slick canal, and hook out the soft hoofs, the gluey nose, the plastered-back ears. And she knows, in the way she always does, that she will reach the other side of birth, that she and this baby will live. Nothing, however, could have prepared her for the relentlessness of it. It is like trying to stand in a gale, like trying to swim against the current of a flooded river, like trying to lift a fallen tree. Never has she been more sensible of her weakness, of her inadequacy. She has always felt herself to be a strong person: she can push a cow into milking position, she can douse and stir a load of laundry, she can lift and carry her small siblings, a bale of skins, a bucket of water, an armful of firewood. Her body is one of resilience, of power: she is all muscle beneath smooth skin. But this is something else. Something other. It laughs at her attempts to master it, to subdue it, to rise above it. It will, Agnes fears, overtake her. It will seize her by the scruff of her neck and plunge her down, under the surface of the water.

I am already out at sea. Floating in the water while gazing back at the innocent girl on dry sand who believes that she will never get wet. It won't be long. Any second now the wave will arrive to wash around her feet and strike terror into her heart. Then she will know. She will understand that a woman's place is in the sea. Where the acts of floundering, drowning and gulping mouthfuls of salty water while struggling to swim against the current are the true essence of our sex.

The focus of AMOR FATI offers a much gentler and more passive sentiment. However, AMOR FATI need not deny the notion of trying to overcome and accomplish, of trying to thrash and swim against the current of existence and achieve things within it or control where it takes us. Rather one’s fate includes this. It includes trying to overcome life’s conditions and failing in some ultimate sense. And arguably this idea of AMOR FATI was in its own right an overcoming of Nietzsche’s, as well as potentially for those who adopt it. An overcoming of this ultimate conclusion of self-overcoming the unattainable ideal self and ideal life, AMOR FATI is a sentiment of willingness to accept at last the way things have gone and will go, to live a life that tries in almost every moment to make you hate it and to still stare back at it and say: YES, I LOVE IT!!! What’s scarier than an opponent who smiles while being beaten. And perhaps because of that Nietzsche remains arguably one of the most notable and dynamic philosophers of all time.

But what was lacking, what was different, I asked myself, listening to the talk? And to answer that question I had to think myself out of the room, back into the past, before the war indeed, and to set before my eyes the model of another luncheon party held in rooms not very far distant from these; but different. Everything was different. Meanwhile the talk went on among the guests, who were many and young, some of this sex, some of that; it went on swimmingly, it went on agreeably, freely, amusingly. And as it went on I set it against the background of that other talk, and as I matched the two together I had no doubt that one was the descendant, the legitimate heir of the other. Nothing was changed; nothing was different save only - here I listened with all my ears not entirely to what was being said, but to the murmur or current behind it. Yes - that was it - the change was there. Before the war at a luncheon party like this people would have said precisely the same things but they would have sounded different, because in those days they were accompanied by a sort of humming noise, not articulate, but musical, exciting, which changed the value of the words themselves. Could one set that humming noise to words? Perhaps with the help of the poets one could. ... The very reason why the poetry excites one to such abandonment, such rapture, is that it celebrates some feeling that one used to have (at luncheon parties before the war perhaps), so that one responds easily, familiarly, without having to check the feeling, or to compare it with any that one has now.

Crazy wisdom is, of course, the opposite of conventional wisdom. It is wisdom that deliberately swims against the current in order to avoid being swept along in the numbing wake of bourgeois compromise, wisdom that flouts taboos in order to undermine their power; wisdom that evolves when one, while refusing to avert one's gaze from the sorrows and injustices of the world, insists on joy in spite of everything; wisdom that embraces risk and eschews security, wisdom that turns the tables on neurosis by lampooning it, the wisdom of those who neither seek authority nor willingly submit to it.

Almost worse than the sorrow of missing her was the fact that Mom's death had revealed everything to be meaningless. So much of what I'd thought was true had turned out to be an illusion. I saw people around me living by these illusions— that love and safety could be counted on, that life had meaning and the future could be controlled— and I did not feel that I could ever again share their suspended disbelief. I was swimming against a strong, cold current: I could see them there, playing on a sunny beach, but I couldn't rejoin them. Continuing the struggle seemed not only incredibly painful but, even worse, pointless.

If we wish to use the word “life” to cover all phenomena which locally swim upstream against the current of increasing entropy, we are at liberty to do so. However, we shall then include many astronomical phenomena which have only the shadiest resemblance to life as we ordinarily know it. It is in my opinion, therefore, best to avoid all question-begging epithets such as “life,” “soul,” “vitalism,” and the like, and say merely in connection with machines that there is no reason why they may not resemble human beings in representing pockets of decreasing entropy in a framework in which the large entropy tends to increase.

One more thing to mention that is unique to swimming locker rooms is that there is a lot of undressing, multiple times a session. We arrived in our clothes and changed into our practice suits to warm up, then we changed from our practice suits into our racing suits, then from our racing suits back into our practice suits to finish warming down, and then from our practice suits back into our clothes. So just in one session, you would undress down to nothing four times. Then we would come back for finals that same day and repeat the process all over again. Just trying to hit home the fact that there were lots of opportunities to be seen fully exposed each day.

Before anyone could be delivered, everybody betrayed everybody. The Jews no longer knew which current to swim, and brother turned against brother. It seems that Josephus was quick in putting all the blame on the Zealots, himself having deserted the mission. He was a turncoat, and nothing he said can be taken at face value without carefully reading between the lines. Josephus did not recognize that the same guys he cursed in failure would have been his heroes in success. But then, the failure might have come about through those who abandoned the mission—those like himself. It is the age-old question: has the freedom fighter turned terrorist, or has the terrorist turned freedom fighter?

The spirit of the age cannot be compassed by the processes of human reason. It is an inclination, an emotional tendency that works upon weaker minds, through the unconscious, with an overwhelming force of suggestion that carries them along with it. To think otherwise than our contemporaries think is somehow illegitimate and disturbing; it is even indecent, morbid or blasphemous, and therefore socially dangerous for the individual. He is stupidly swimming against the social current. Just as formerly the assumption was unquestionable that everything that exists takes its rise from the creative will of a God who is spirit, so the nineteenth century discovered the equally unquestionable truth that everything arises from material causes. Today the psyche does not build itself a body, but on the contrary, matter, by chemical action, produces the psyche. This reversal of outlook would be ludicrous if it were not one of the outstanding features of the spirit of the age. It is the popular way of thinking, and therefore it is decent, reasonable, scientific and normal. Mind must be thought to be an epiphenomenon of matter. The same conclusion is reached even if we say not "mind" but "psyche", and in place of matter speak of brain, hormones, instincts or drives. To grant the substantiality of the soul or psyche is repugnant to the spirit of the age, for to do so would be heresy.

Mermaid queens didn't often have a reason to move quickly. There were no wars to direct, no assassination attempts to evade, no crowds of clamoring admirers to avoid among the merfolk. In fact, slowness and calm were expected of royalty. So Ariel found herself thoroughly enjoying the exercise as she beat her tail against the water- even as it winded her a little. She missed dashing through shipwrecks with Flounder, fleeing sharks, trying to scoot back home before curfew. She loved the feel of her powerful muscles, the way the current cut around her when she twisted her shoulders to go faster. She hadn't been this far up in years and gulped as the pressure of the deep faded. She clicked her ears, readying them for the change of environment. Colors faded and transformed around her from the dark, heady slate of the ocean bottom to the soothing azure of the middle depths and finally lightening to the electric, magical periwinkle that heralded the burst into daylight. She hadn't planned to break through the surface triumphantly. She wouldn't give it that power. Her plan was to take it slow and rise like a whale. Casually, unperturbed, like Ooh, here I am. But somehow her tail kicked in twice as hard the last few feet, and she exploded into the warm sunlit air like she had been drowning. She gulped again and tasted the breeze- dry in her mouth; salt and pine and far-distant fires and a thousand alien scents.

The natural world gives us many examples of the great effectiveness of this way. The Chinese philosophy of which judo itself is an expression—Taoism—drew attention to the power of water to overcome all obstacles by its gentleness and pliability. It showed how the supple willow survives the tough pine in a snowstorm, for whereas the unyielding branches of the pine accumulate snow until they crack, the springy boughs of the willow bend under its weight, drop the snow, and jump back again. If, when swimming, you are caught in a strong current, it is fatal to resist. You must swim with it and gradually edge to the side. One who falls from a height with stiff limbs will break them, but if he relaxes like a cat he will fall safely. A building without 'give' in its structure will easily collapse in storm or earthquake, and a car without the cushioning of tires and springs will soon come apart on the road. The mind has just the same powers, for it has give and can absorb shocks like water or a cushion. But this giving way to an opposing force is not at all the same thing as running away. A body of water does not run away when you push it; it simply gives at the point of the push and encloses your hand. A shock absorber does not fall down like a bowling-pin when struck; it gives, and yet stays in the same place. To run away is the only defense of something rigid against an overwhelming force. Therefore the good shock absorber has not only 'give,' but also stability or 'weight.

Time is the water in which we live, and we breathe it like fish. It’s hard to swim against the current. Onrushing, inevitable, carried like a leaf, Fleur fooled herself in thinking she could choose her direction. But time is an element no human has mastered, and Fleur was bound to go where she was sent. Maybe in those long nights as she watched the crack of light beneath the door, she had an inkling. She thought revenge was behind that door, and satisfaction. Maybe she began to realize that she was wrong. There was only time. For what is a man, what are we all, but bits of time caught for a moment in a tangle of blood, bones, skin, and brain? She was time. Mauser was time. I am a sorry bit of time myself. We are time’s containers. Time pours into us and then pours out again. In between the two pourings we live our destiny.

As you go through life, the might current of society is bound to get in your way and there will certainly be times that things don't go as you'd hoped. When this happens, don't look to society for a cause. Do not renounce society. Frankly, you'd be wasting your time. Instead just say, "That's life!" and muddle your way through with frustration. Once you're past it, consider: If society's swift current is tossing you around, how should you be swimming there in it's midst. You should have learned how, here in the E class, in this assassination classroom. You don't always have to stand and face it head-on. You can run and you can hide. If it's not against the rules, you can try a sneak attack. You can use unconventional weapons. Stay determined - not impatient nor discouraged - and with repeated trial and error, you're bound to reach a splendid outcome eventually.

The current of life never stops,' he'd say. 'One can choose to swim downstream. That's an easier trip, of course, and there's always lots of company, but sooner or later it's also where all the garbage collects. 'Upstream, on the other hand, is where the water is pure. The things that make life special and worthwhile are all upstream, and to get there, you must discipline yourself to swim against the current. 'Be most aware,' Jones would say, 'of the danger of treading water. Many people believe there are three choices: swimming upstream, swimming downstream, and holding in place by treading water. 'In reality, the choices are only two. One can struggle upstream or travel downstream, but when a person chooses to stop swimming midstream, there is no such thing as holding in place. Water - like a life without purpose - always flows downstream, and everything that does not struggle from its grasp goes downstream too.

tennis phenoms Venus and Serena Williams have experienced losing to a male with not nearly as much notoriety as they have… in a blowout. In 1998, in a matchup against Karsten Braasch, the 203rd ranked male tennis player from Germany, Serena lost 6–1 and Venus lost 6–2. Keep in mind Serena is a 23-time Grand Champion and her sister a 7-time Grand Champion. Serena herself said, “I hit shots that would have been winners on the women’s Tour, and he got to them easily.” Is it a good time to mention at the time Braasch was smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, and smoked during changeovers the day of the match? He also admitted to playing a round of golf and drinking a few cocktails before facing the Williams sisters as well as performing like “a guy ranked 600th.” Thirteen years later, in an interview with David Letterman, Serena noted she would lose to Andy Murray 6–0 in just a matter of minutes. She went as far to say men and women’s tennis is a totally different sport. Serena told Letterman, “I love to play women’s tennis. I only want to play girls because I don’t want to be embarrassed.

It’s becoming clearer daily that we’ve been thrust into a fourth wave of feminism, the most ironic and contradictory wave yet: the wave where men make the best women. The objective of this wave is equal outcomes for all humans rather than individual freedoms, opportunities, and the ending of sex-based discrimination. This ideology is in direct opposition to traditional American values. Fourth-wave feminism no longer just attends to the struggles of women; it’s a demand for the elimination of “men” and “women” by rendering them the same and interchangeable. While many modern Americans wouldn’t consider themselves feminists, most still support legal, social, and economic equality between the sexes. Most of those who openly and proudly call themselves feminists believe men and women are equal and the same, which is why I mentioned I wouldn’t have previously considered myself a feminist. While I certainly believe men and women were created equal and in God’s image, I don’t believe they are the same. Men and women are inherently and beautifully different. Neither is inferior to the other, as we each have unique strengths and weaknesses.

Twenty, thirty, forty feet. The pressure wasn’t uncomfortable. I’d never tried to push it—to see if there was a limit to how deep I could dive. I knew most regular humans couldn’t go past two hundred feet without crumpling like an aluminum can. I should’ve been blind, too, this deep in the water at night, but I could see the heat from living forms, and the cold of the currents. It’s hard to describe. It wasn’t like regular seeing, but I could tell where everything was. As I got closer to the bottom, I saw three hippocampi—fish-tailed horses—swimming in a circle around an overturned boat. The hippocampi were beautiful to watch. Their fish tails shimmered in rainbow colors, glowing phosphorescent. Their manes were white, and they were galloping through the water the way nervous horses do in a thunderstorm. Something was upsetting them. I got closer and saw the problem. A dark shape—some kind of animal—was wedged halfway under the boat and tangled in a fishing net, one of those big nets they use on trawlers to catch everything at once. I hated those things. It was bad enough they drowned porpoises and dolphins, but they also occasionally caught mythological animals. When the nets got tangled, some lazy fishermen would just cut them loose and let the trapped animals die. Apparently this poor creature had been mucking around on the bottom of Long Island Sound and had somehow gotten itself tangled in the net of this sunken fishing boat. It had tried to get out and managed to get even more hopelessly stuck, shifting the boat in the process. Now the wreckage of the hull, which was resting against a big rock, was teetering and threatening to collapse on top of the tangled animal. The hippocampi were swimming around frantically, wanting to help but not sure how. One was trying to chew the net, but hippocampi teeth just aren’t meant for cutting rope. Hippocampi are really strong, but they don’t have hands, and they’re not (shhh) all that smart. Free

against the velvet rope force fields that kept everyone without an invitation at bay. As I walked toward the entrance, the crowd bombarded me with a mix of insults, autograph requests, death threats, and tearful declarations of undying love. I had my body shield activated, but surprisingly, no one took a shot at me. I flashed the cyborg doorman my invitation, then mounted the long crystal staircase leading up into the club. Entering the Distracted Globe was more than a little disorienting. The inside of the giant sphere was completely hollow, and its curved interior surface served as the club’s bar and lounge area. The moment you passed through the entrance, the laws of gravity changed. No matter where you walked, your avatar’s feet always adhered to the interior of the sphere, so you could walk in a straight line, up to the “top” of the club, then back down the other side, ending up right back where you started. The huge open space in the center of the sphere served as the club’s zero-gravity “dance floor.” You reached it simply by jumping off the ground, like Superman taking flight, and then swimming through the air, into the spherical zero-g “groove zone.” As I stepped through the entrance, I glanced up—or in the direction that was currently “up” to me at the moment—and took a long look around. The place was packed. Hundreds of avatars milled around like ants crawling around the inside of a giant balloon. Others were already out on the dance floor—spinning, flying, twisting, and tumbling in time with the music, which thumped out of floating spherical speakers that drifted throughout the club. In the middle of all the dancers, a large clear bubble was suspended in space, at the absolute center of the club. This was the “booth” where the DJ stood, surrounded by turntables, mixers, decks, and dials. At the center of all that gear was the opening DJ, R2-D2, hard at work, using his various robotic arms to work the turntables. I recognized the tune he was playing: the ’88 remix of New Order’s “Blue Monday,” with a lot of Star Wars droid sound samples mixed in. As I made my way to the nearest bar, the avatars I passed all stopped to stare and point in

Meditation + Mental Strength An emotion is our evolved biology predicting the future impact of a current event. In modern settings, it’s usually exaggerated or wrong. Why is meditation so powerful? Your breath is one of the few places where your autonomic nervous system meets your voluntary nervous system. It’s involuntary, but you can also control it. I think a lot of meditation practices put an emphasis on the breath because it is a gateway into your autonomic nervous system. There are many, many cases in the medical and spiritual literature of people controlling their bodies at levels that should be autonomous. Your mind is such a powerful thing. What’s so unusual about your forebrain sending signals to your hindbrain and your hindbrain routing resources to your entire body? You can do it just by breathing. Relaxed breathing tells your body you’re safe. Then, your forebrain doesn’t need as many resources as it normally does. Now, the extra energy can be sent to your hindbrain, and it can reroute those resources to the rest of your body. I’m not saying you can beat whatever illness you have just because you activated your hindbrain. But you’re devoting most of the energy normally required to care about the external environment to the immune system. I highly recommend listening to the Tim Ferriss’s podcast with Wim Hof. He is a walking miracle. Wim’s nickname is the Ice Man. He holds the world record for the longest time spent in an ice bath and swimming in freezing cold water. I was very inspired by him, not only because he’s capable of super-human physical feats, but because he does it while being incredibly kind and happy—which is not easy to accomplish. He advocates cold exposure, because he believes people are too separate from their natural environment. We’re constantly clothed, fed, and warm. Our bodies have lost touch with the cold. The cold is important because it can activate the immune system. So, he advocates taking long ice baths. Being from the Indian subcontinent, I’m strongly against the idea of ice baths. But Wim inspired me to give cold showers a try. And I did so by using the Wim Hof breathing method. It involves hyperventilating to get more oxygen into your blood, which raises your core temperature. Then, you can go into the shower. The first few cold showers were hilarious because I’d slowly ease myself in, wincing the entire way. I started about four or five months ago. Now, I turn the shower on full-blast, and then I walk right in. I don’t give myself any time to hesitate. As soon as I hear the voice in my head telling me how cold it’s going to be, I know I have to walk in. I learned a very important lesson from this: most of our suffering comes from avoidance. Most of the suffering from a cold shower is the tip-toeing your way in. Once you’re in, you’re in. It’s not suffering. It’s just cold. Your body saying it’s cold is different than your mind saying it’s cold. Acknowledge your body saying it’s cold. Look at it. Deal with it. Accept it, but don’t mentally suffer over it. Taking a cold shower for two minutes isn’t going to kill you. Having a cold shower helps you re-learn that lesson every morning. Now hot showers are just one less thing I need out of life. [2] Meditation is intermittent fasting for the mind. Too much sugar leads to a heavy body, and too many distractions lead to a heavy mind. Time spent undistracted and alone, in self-examination, journaling, meditation, resolves the unresolved and takes us from mentally fat to fit.

Remember, a dead fish can float down stream, it takes a live one to swim against the current. W. C. Fields

The word “plankton” is derived from the Greek root word that means free floating or wandering. The term is applied to any plant or animal that is unattached and floating in the surface waters of the ocean as well as to any weak, swimming animal that cannot swim against the ocean’s currents.

Swimming against the current is the true embodiment of freedom.

The Christian psychologist often sound Christian and biblical . Many of the theological words are there. But the meanings are different. The current mass psychologization of Christian life and thought is the popular fruit of the integration movement. The logic and drift of the integrationist movement has not been biblical logic and drift. The church is reaping the consequences. Integration or inundation? The deluge is upon us. If Machen wrote his book today, he would entitle it Christianity and Psychologism. The modern psychological evangelicalism, the intellectual flood in which we float or against which we swim, is not Christianity.

How easy it all was! Only surrender, and everything else followed. It was like swimming against a current that swept you backwards however hard you struggled, and then suddenly deciding to turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. Nothing had changed except your own attitude; the predestined thing happened in any case. He hardly knew why he had ever rebelled. Everything was easy. Everything was easy, except -!

I always imagined that the big things that happen to us in our lives, the directions we take, are as currents in a stream. Sometimes they are smooth, graceful, and gentle, and sometimes they are raging. Wisdom, whatever I possess, tells me that you have to know what sort of current you are in and what exactly you can do about it. “If it’s the raging current, you can battle it and smash yourself or be smashed against obstacles, boulders, whatever. In the end, the current will have its way anyway, or you can choose to not only let it carry you but swim faster than it can carry you.

Self-handicapping is one of the most common psychological drives behind addiction. If you have managed to be a “functional” stoner, imagine how well you could be doing if you took the obstacle of weed away: stop retarding your life by swimming against the current, operating at a fraction of what you are capable of.

It was exhausting to be constantly swimming against the current. I wanted to simply float along, to enjoy the bliss of just one thing in my life going right.

Don't swim against the current unless you are the ship.

Challenging me is like swimming against the tides, you’ll eventually tire and will be swept away by the current. Understand this, I make the challenges, not the other way around. It’s time you learn that.

Did you ever think that maybe we’re like that?” she asks me. I smile into the dark. How many times have I thought of myself as the ocean? “You think we’re like water?” Gemma sits up. The salty wind coming off the water snaps her hair around her shoulders. With one hand in the middle of my chest, she tries to push me into the sand. I’m strong enough to hold her off, but I don’t want to. I willingly collapse back and she crawls over me. Holding a smile on her face, she slips her legs on either side of my hips and settles her weight on me. In a voice thin as smoke, she says, “Well, maybe that’s how we start. Maybe, in the beginning, we’re nothing but a theoretical vast and empty sea with this huge open sky above us.” Her hands press down on my stomach and her fingers pull at the bottom of my shirt. She leans forward until her breasts are rubbing against me and her mouth is almost touching the skin of my neck. “Then slowly,” she continues, “over time, the currents change and we build up these continents inside our bodies.” Now her fingers walk a path from my bellybutton to my sternum. “And eventually, we have canyons and deserts and trees and beaches and all sorts of places where we can go and live.” I suck in a breath as Gemma flattens her hand on the skin just above my heart and kisses me just below my ear. Then she turns her face, fitting the crown of her head beneath my jaw and says, “Most of the time we’re safe on the land, but sometimes we get sucked out to sea. What do you think happens then?” I think about everything we’ve shared today. I think about Gemma and me. And how it feels like the geography inside of my own body is changing, how it’s been changing from the moment I met her. Maybe even before that. And I think about the continents we’re building between us. The bridges of land moving from her fingers to mine and the valleys and mountains formed by her lips on my skin and her words in my head. I use both of my hands to cup her face and pull her to my mouth. I press my lips to hers, parting her mouth and drinking in her breath. “I think you’d have to start swimming.” A minute of silence ticks by. Over the low drone of the waves on the beach, she whispers, “And what if you can’t swim very well?” I think for a minute. “Then you fly.

Rebellious Fish [10w] Sometimes swimming against the current turns you into glazed salmon.

There are people swimming against the current and shadows moving slowly in the deep.

Going With The Flow- July 8 "Go with the flow. Let go of fear and your need to control. Relinquish anxiety. Let it slip away, as you dive into the river of the present moment, the river of your life., your place in the universe. Stop trying to force the direction. Try not to swim against the current, unless it is necessary for your survival. If you've been clinging to a branch at the riverside, let it go. Let yourself move forward. Let yourself be moved forward. Avoid the rapids when possible. If you can't, stay relaxed. Staying relaxed can take you safely through fierce currents. If you go under for a moment, allow yourself to surface naturally. You will. Appreciate the beauty of the new scenery, as it is. See things with freshness, with newness. You shall never pass by today's scenery again! Don't think too hard about things. The flow is meant to be experienced. Within it, care for yourself. You are part of the flow, an important part. Work with the flow. Work within the flow. Thrashing about isn't necessary. Let the flow help you care for yourself. Let the flow help you set boundaries, make decisions, and get you where you need to be when it is time. You can trust the flow and your part in it. Today, I will go with the flow.

... We agreed to stay in touch but you swim against the current and only your touch remained in my hand.

Breaking the surface, he gulped in a breath, released his hold on the hair, and taking a firm grip on the man’s arm, tried to tow him to shore. Unfortunately, the man didn’t seem to be receptive to that idea and immediately began fighting him, which had Bram tightening his grip. “Stop . . . trying . . . to drown me,” he heard the man rasp in an unexpectedly high voice between bobs of his head lifting and sinking through the water. “I’m trying to save you.” “Is that what you call this?” Intending to reassure the obviously distressed and certainly panicked man, Bram opened his mouth, but soon found himself incapable of speech, a direct result of suddenly finding himself underneath the water. Taken completely by surprise by the idea the man had dunked him, he dodged the man’s kicking legs, as well as a few dog paws, and sputtered his way back to the surface, discovering as he did so that the man he’d thought was drowning was swimming his way quite competently to shore. Striking out after him with his dogs paddling on either side of him, Bram soon reached the side of the moat. Clawing his way up the dirt bank, he flopped onto the grass and turned his head, his attention settling on the man he’d been trying to save. That man was already on his feet, but the longer Bram watched the man, the more it became clear he was no man at all. He, or rather she, had lost her greatcoat in the moat, and her wet clothing was currently plastered against a form that was . . . curvaceous. When she shoved a hunk of long hair away from her face, exposing whiskers, of all things, Bram suddenly found it very difficult to breath because . . . Standing only feet away from him was none other than Miss Lucetta Plum, one of the most intriguing ladies to ever grace the stage, and a lady who had captured his very great esteem. She was looking a little worse for wear, especially since she had mud on her face mixed in with the whiskers, and she also had clumps of algae in her hair, but even in such a sorry state, she was beautiful. She was also the lady he’d been slightly in love with ever since he’d first seen her take to the stage a few years back. Her delicate and refined nature had pulled at his very soul, and the very idea that such a fragile creature was forced to eke out a living on her own had been unfathomable. That was what had prompted Bram to set into motion ways to improve Miss Plum’s circumstance in life, those ways including . . . A

I know that I’m not the only one doing these things, committing small acts of rebellion. There are people swimming against the current and shadows moving slowly in the deep. I have been the one looking up when something dark passed before the sun. And I have been the shadow itself, slipping along the place where earth and water meet the sky.

Swimming against the current is easier if what is on the other side is greater than your pain.

Fate is never fair. You are caught in a current much stronger than you are, Jonathan; struggle against it and you’ll drown not just yourself but those who try to save you. Swim with it, and you’ll survive.

Everyone has problems, frustrations, and discouragements. Everyone has enemies, or at least people with whom we have conflict. It takes no effort to allow ourselves to be pulled into negative emotions through the things we don’t like. There’s a saying, “Any dead fish can float downstream.” To be carried by our emotions, all we must do is let ourselves go and drift where emotions carry us. If you let your mind wander, chances are it will land on a hurt or something negative and begin brooding. It takes life to swim against the current. Look at the contrast between bitterness and love. These are two opposing forces. One is rooted in the flesh, and one has been given to us by God. Have you ever met a bitter person? Someone who always talks about how they have been wronged, or the things that are wrong in the world? If you spend much time around a negative person, you will adopt negative attitudes. Does a negative person have life? No. Bitterness is a life-sucking emotion. When anger is allowed to rule, it gives birth to bitterness and hatred. These emotions serve no other purpose than to search and destroy. While these may be born from a specific offense, they cannot maintain a single target, and begin attacking our own hearts and minds, and then begin targeting those around us. Negative emotions attempt to rise up, war against our minds, and bring us under its bondage. They are weeds in the garden of our mind. Positive emotions are like fruitful plants, but they cannot thrive when they are being choked out by these weeds.

It’s much more powerful and exciting to be grounded in the present moment. Then life is like flowing down a river at the same velocity as the current. We become the flow surrounded by everything we need, and all we have to do is to choose to use what is provided, or choose not to. Life becomes effortless and we expend minimal energy achieving things. When we start thinking or trying to control things, it’s like swimming against the current. And the more we think, or try to control things, the more isolated we become from reality. Living in the thinking mode requires so much more energy than resting in this present moment.

Her hair was matted to her head, glistening dark red, like wine through a murky bottle. Her torn shirt hung loose, a breast carelessly exposed, and her breeches were taut against the lean muscles of her legs. She treaded through the waves, never swaying in the current, until she stood before him, face concealed in shadow. “You swim faster with one arm than I with two,” she said. Nathan laughed. “You frightened me.

Emotions are like a tide that will go in or out regardless of your permission. But instead of fighting, swimming against the current, and being tossed by the waves, allow their power and movement to buoy you, to take you toward your Self.

I was getting dressed back into my clothes from my practice suit when it was like someone unplugged the sound. Dead silence. My back was turned toward the door, but before I even turned around, I knew what this silence meant. It would answer my curious question of what the locker room would look like. Upon turning around and shifting my eyes upward to the 6′4″ Thomas, I immediately felt the inherent need to cover my chest, as someone with a male gaze and a male voice entered the room. Some of the girls grabbed towels, shirts, or whatever was close by and covered the exposed parts of their body. Other girls looked the other way. We were all in various stages of nakedness. None of us said a word. I can’t accurately put into words the feelings of violation when hearing a man’s voice in the locker room where you are fully nude. Thomas walked toward the corner of the locker room and began to change out of a women’s practice suit and get naked. Right in front of us. No introduction, no “Excuse me,” no explanation, no privacy for us. My teammates and I cut wide eyes with each other, not really understanding our emotions in that moment. Of course, we felt awkward, embarrassed, and uncomfortable. I remember specifically feeling betrayed. I thought of how our privacy as females had been entirely dismissed, violated, and ignored. There was no thought to how we would respond or how uncomfortable a male sharing this changing space with us would make us feel. It felt like we were pawns in a sick game catering to the male who claimed our identity but didn’t have the same physiology, anatomy, or chromosomes, to name a few… I desperately wanted to call my mom and dad and tell them of this situation in hopes they would reassure me that I wasn’t crazy in experiencing this as a total violation of our rights to privacy as women.

Swimming is a sport that measured down to the hundredth of a second. To have one person beating every girl in the entire country by nearly two full seconds is an anomaly. Instead of the expected celebratory cheers from a usually boisterous crowd, the audience’s response to Thomas’s win fell unusually flat. There were even audible boos from the stands. Weyant’s announcement was a different story. When her second-place victory was broadcast, the aquatic center exploded in applause, whistles, and shouts of acclaim. The difference between the two swimmers couldn’t have been more obvious. People were saying with applause and cheers what they couldn’t or wouldn’t say with their words.