the wave returns to the lake.

I’m trying to learn to meditate.

Like a lot of people, I’ve heard about all the brainy benefits of it. And like a lot of people, my brain is constantly zipping around looking for something to do. Meditation is supposed to calm the brain, to help it focus on the present moment. If you make a habit of it, I’m told, you feel sharper, your attention span becomes longer, sleep comes more easily and stress falls away. Sounds idyllic.

But my brain doesn’t like to sit still and focus on breathing. And I don’t just mean it kind of whines before doing it. I mean, this is one of the hardest possible things in the world for my brain to do. Think about nothing?! Are you crazy? Thinking is for being about things.

I’ve been reading up lately on adult ADHD and how it presents differently in women and girls than in the hyper, train-obsessed little boys we often imagine. And honestly, much of it resonates. But mostly, I’m writing this to tell you about what I try to do with my brain when it wants to wander while I’m meditating.

I swim.

The summer I turned seventeen, I was in the best shape of my life. I spent the first half of the summer alternating between early morning swim team workouts and early morning cross-country team workouts. And I got into yoga for the first time that summer. I could put my head on my knees.

The second half of the summer, I was at camp in Minnesota, and finally got the chance to learn to sail. On the first day of sailing we all had to take a swim test, and this was to swim across our small inlet of the lake. I have no idea how far it was (everything about my life there was always delightfully analog), but the whole way across, I was in the lead, effortlessly. At no other time in my life has any physical achievement come effortlessly to me.

So it’s that moment I like to imagine when I meditate, to come back to when my mind wanders to the many related and unrelated places it can find to go. To slowly follow the shoreline, memorized years since. To imagine each landmark of this ground hallowed by youthful memories, be it visible from the water, or buried in the trees and known only to me by my long acquaintance with this place. To look out to the clear sky and distant shore. To be seventeen and heading out for a swim which I will accomplish with ease, with joy.