State of All Fears
For many, the ocean is an endless stream flows forever around the border of infinity, ceaselessly turning upon itself. For some, perspective of the sea is still the end on earth and the sunrise on heaven. For someone of a fearsome mind, passing through up and below gathering darkness and obscuring mist would come at last to a frightful and chaotic blending of sea and sky, a place where abysses waited to draw one’s down into a dark creation from which there is no return.
courtesy of SBS, Australia
Diving was robbed of its mystique and often misconstrued as merely a thankless, difficult, and dangerous sport. Things like what and how divers encounter problems as a result of currents or changing surface conditions, differing water temperatures and visibility. Also the fact that divers are reliant on equipment to breathe when being under the water. Let alone folk tales but less facts on dangers of marine animal such as a shark, stingray or jellyfish. Doggy boat operators sailing right above when we are ascending.
Dark side of such perceptions have been settling down over educated preparations, and a little of the knowledge of appropriate training acquired good standard trainers or instructors, and of course trainees who are actually ready to follow those.
Scuba diving is exhilarating recreational activities, but there are reasons why safety is always the key to enjoyable dives. Underwater and surface navigation can be trained, the subject always begin and end with the compass. First; making your version of mind map on the landscape and sea perspectives are vital. An experience diver would plan a route through the dive site and try to stick to it instead of wandering randomly, regardless of how the current seems to shift or how huge unexpected whale sharks he would be chasing. The key to staying focus is also observing existing surroundings, based on constant motion you are bench-marking. A good diver would look for a landmark on surface and down descending, a safer diver always make cross-references to as many landmark as possible before he dives and plan ahead for options when it comes to safety and direction concern.
State of mind can overcome any state of fear. I have come across many nerve-wrecking incidents on the surface and under the water; where divers get lost and panic as they drift so far away and so long time they started to give up on help and pray for miracle. In life or at sea, there comes a time when everything seems to go south on you, a diver-in-you could either accept that or could choose to stay resilient and cope with it. A strong mind would start one thing at a time, resolve one problem onto another until his last breathe.
The day of the dive is also the day of life in the making, no matter what state or level you are in. A sea must change into something rich and strange so as to a man must march into new territories as he grows himself into something bigger and better. The ocean is the earth’s one greatest laboratory of discovery and experiments.
Life is always a test.
... so is what’d be waiting beyond our best, in the oceans.
