Immersion and Depth
...pathways to revitalization
I was rummaging through some old photo albums this morning. Funny how a photograph can take you back, bringing up all kinds of feelings, recollections and even the overarching moods and hopes and ideas associated with the times when they were taken. Looking at vacation photos, next thing I knew I was thinking about how as a child I played in the lake all day, how the water and sun touched my skin. I recalled the white paint flaking off the anchored raft, and how the earth, moss and trees scented the air I breathed on the shoreline. I recalled incidents from childhood, and then from my children’s childhood. I thought about how when I was a kid during our times together at the lake, even the grownups relaxed a little and laughed a bit more, how rules and routines loosened up, how families and cousins would get together and everyone stayed up late playing games and talking. I remember flashlights and nighttime mysteries and rainy afternoons reading comics, playing canasta or UNO, eating ice cream.
And yes, there’s a difference between looking at a picture of a lake on the one hand, actually getting out to stand on its shoreline, and jumping into that lake and immersing myself in it fully. That said, any of these things can be a revitalizing experience.
As it happens, I not only vacationed on lakes with my family growing up, I also was lucky enough to have lived on one for a good long time as a child. My own children experienced something similar, and for the last 19 years I’ve lived on a lake once again. Still, even though I am reliably awestruck when I see a great blue heron landing to feed at the water’s edge, sometimes I have to jump into that water or strap on my ice skates to remind myself how real it is.
Of course, it’s all real: the photos, the shoreline, and the total physical immersion. So it’s more a question of how real I can be in the moment. Things get deeper the more openness and emotional depth I’m willing to bring to my experience. Things get deeper the more physically engaged and more vulnerable I am as I show up. And that’s true whether I’m holding an old photo in my hand, or whether I’m in it over my head.
So if you’re looking for some kind of revitalization, a way to remedy the grayness or shallowness or emptiness that can sometimes creep into our lives, I invite you to read on.
I understand that not everyone has the kinds of experiences I’ve had with lakes over the course of my lifetime. In a way I’m using it as a metaphor here, because it captures the many kinds of depth and levels of immersion we can bring to our experience. And I think, too, especially here in Michigan, it’s an experience many people will be able to relate with.
But for you, it could be something different. Maybe the image that stirs your depths is a photo of your sweetheart or a picture of your parents, grandparents or children. Maybe it’s a picture of a different kind of landscape that you find inspiring and have visited — mountains, seashore, desert, city — or a place you hope to visit someday. Maybe it’s a wedding photo, an image of a flower, an art reproduction, graduation portrait, or something you or a child painted. Maybe it’s inspiring printed words or religious iconography. Maybe you keep such a photo on your desk at work or at home, or on your dresser. It could be something taped to your refrigerator or the inside of your front door. Look around. There might be something within your range of vision right now.
It doesn’t matter so much what it is. What matters is our power to bring our own depths of feeling and appreciation to it.
That’s why we keep these things, right? That’s why we hang them on our walls. That’s why old photos are sometimes hard to get rid of. I think we put these things where we’ll see them because of where they take us in ourselves. To the extent that we immerse ourselves in these images, we can emerge from their contemplation transformed. They can help us recontextualize our current experience.
Bad day at the office?
Look at the shining face of this child!
Feeling anonymous, distant, disconnected or overworked?
Think of your sweetheart, who really wants to know you, whose arms want to wrap around you, and in whose presence you feel renewed!
Daily routines and work environment dragging you down?
Remember the time you hiked to that waterfall? The cool splashing and the fresh, rejuvenating air?
Remember… and breathe!
So let’s go back to a passage earlier in this essay: Yes, there’s a difference between looking at a picture of a lake, actually getting out to stand on the shoreline, and jumping in and immersing ourselves in it fully. At the same time, any of these things can bring depth. In my better moments, just by being on the shoreline, I can find myself immersed in the play of afternoon sunlight on the water, or the mood and mystery of the lake and its inhabitants on a quiet morning.
Bottom line is, every experience can be a kind of diving in: Sharing a cup of coffee, having a conversation with a friend, engaging in an activity like playing with children or listening to music or cooking dinner. With any one of these, we can choose to be fully immersed. Watching my 3-year-old granddaughter at the beach reminds me that it’s quite possible to be fully immersed in the experience of wading in the shallows.
But here’s something else that is important to think about: Just as it’s possible to bring fullness and depth to our contemplation of a picture printed on a thin piece of paper and to be renewed in important ways by doing so, it’s also quite possible for the whole thing to work in reverse. Even our experience of actual, fully dimensional things, people, places and events, can sort of thin out if we let it. For example, we can get so caught up in symbolizing and making an image of ourselves and our lives that we lose our depth. It’s kind of sad, but it can happen that we may slowly become a “paper parent” where our experience of our children devolves into a treadmill of schedules or lifeless routine and we lose our feeling of connection with the ongoing miracle of their growth. Likewise, and often without meaning to, we might gradually start to bring to our sweethearts a grey wall of habit, forgetting the living person right in front of us. And then again, as described earlier, even if we live among them, we may also forget the astonishing reality of lakes and rivers and forests and mountains, the prairies and the wind, the living green landscape and the living people we encounter on our ways. I have to ask myself: do I remember to draw strength from the lake outside the window? Then again, do the people of Seattle consciously seek out places where they see and commune with the amazing, imposing presence that Mt. Rainier brings to their city? I hope so. Thing is, if we can see the mountain, the mountain can see us. It’s a freaking mountain, after all. Those things have mojo. Then again, so do the clouds the sky.
I hope I’m not overdoing it here, but I think this is super important, especially right now. It’s far too easy, whether by dint of distraction, fatigue or habit, to come to disregard our inspiring cityscape, the mysteries of the buildings we pass and the lives within them, not to mention the birds, the planets, the moon and stars. Likewise, without the gift of our attention, books and art and poetry and music fall into a big pile of unexamined sameness. Eventually even the depths of the cosmos itself as revealed in the sky can flatten into a mere stage backdrop. My observation is that as these things happen, we flatten out, too. Our lives get thinner. But this can be remedied.
The basic principle seems to be that if we offer deadness and thinness to the world, things start to look and feel superficial and dead. On the other hand, when we bring our aliveness and depth and fullness to the people, places, things and activities we engage with, they tend to respond by bringing aliveness, depth and fullness into our experience.
So the question I’m asking myself these days is: What’s it gonna take to really bring my livingness to life? Is there a bigger way I need to dive in today?
As the seasons change over the coming days and weeks, you might want to consider this also. Do you feel the need to explore new places and move into the depths of the landscape to find your own depths and find new places inside yourself? Do you feel the desire to meet with people or try new things or take old skills to new levels? Can we be fully present and feel the livingness in the eyes that meet ours and in the hands that reach out to us today? Can we bring our emotional depths and honesty to every interaction? Can we immerse ourselves more fully and more deeply and more authentically in life? Can we awaken to what’s right around us, this very moment?
Dare we dive? How deeply can we drink life in?
