Do not begin with courage. Courage is a story you tell afterwards, and the water does not take stories as payment. Begin with the fact of the temperature, which is information, not a verdict on your character. Put the hands in. Take them out. Put them in again. The body believes repetition more than it believes speeches. I used to watch adults apologise to a pool for being afraid, as if the pool had been inconvenienced by their nervous system. The pool has no such feeling. Enter on the steps if the steps are there. If someone tells you that real swimmers jump, remember that real swimmers also, at some point, learned the steps, and that the steps are not a lesser door. Breathe out longer than you think you need to. Then decide, and only then, whether today is a swimming day.#
This is an excerpt. The complete piece is in the print and digital edition of Issue 02.