The Water Nymph

I have a new personal hero. Her name is Diana Nyad.

She is a long distance swimmer. Since 1979, her ambition has been to swim from Cuba to Key West.

Cuba to Key West. A total of 110 nautical miles. Shark-filled, jellyfish-infested, hurricane-prone miles. Just think about that for a minute.

She has tried. And tried. And tried. And tried. And, finally, tried again. And on that fifth try, which ended yesterday, she accomplished her goal.

She is 64 years old.

Imagine what that was like. In the water, ocean water, for something like 53 hours. Stroke after stroke after stroke, in open water, with nothing around her but more water, and her team of supporters. But they were not swimming; they were in a boat, or a kayak, and could not help her move her arms, or her legs. They could not converse with her, except when she briefly took nourishment. She was alone in the water, with her thoughts, and, apparently, Beatles songs, which she used to keep her stroke steady.

She swam continuously, without sleep, over two nights. How dark did it get, in the ocean, in the middle of the night, in the water by herself? How lonely? How cold? What thoughts surfaced? How tired must she have been. It must have seemed crazy, in those dark, lonely hours. Why do this? She must have faced, moment by moment, the existential crisis,  the paradox illuminated by Samuel Becket in The Unnameable: "It will be, it will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on."

And yet, there was this goal, that occurred to her when she was 8, and first attempted when she was 29, to do something extreme, to journey from Cuba to Florida using nothing but her arms and legs, and her will, of which she obviously has plenty. She willed herself to, as she put it, "push Cuba away, and pull Florida toward her."

Diana Nyad has said that she hopes that this will serve as an inspiration to others, to dream and pursue the dream, no matter how extreme, or crazy, or how long it takes. She is clearly an extraordinary person, but her message is valid to those of us with less will, who discourage more easily. Our dreams give our lives meaning; without them, life is, in the words of Langston Hughes, "a broken-winged bird that cannot fly." Perhaps they are more modest, but they are unique to us, and we can accomplish them, however far away they may seem, if we will it, if we push away doubt, and pull our dreams towards us.