Find a Way by Diana Nyad

Author:Diana Nyad
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-10-19T16:00:00+00:00

TWENTY

Buck Up, Another Go: 2011

Back in California, my huge duffle bags of gear loom as a reminder of unfinished business. I am as unsettled as my swim stuff, shuffling aimlessly around my house. The dozens of pairs of goggles, the suits hanging on hooks, the caps, the tubs of grease, the huge canisters of protein powder, the red LED night-lights that clip onto my goggle straps, the big training towels from Mexico. All that stuff is sitting there, not begging for final stowaway, but at the ready, still in play. And, as shoes are so often symbolic of events throughout our history, there are my specific flip-flops, white, only used for walking down to the dock or the beach for training, only for slipping on after training, only for the start in Cuba, the end in Florida. These are definitively not shoes for casual wear. When those white rubber flip-flops sitting by my back door catch my eye, my body receives the signal the brain is sending. If I truly want to do this thing, it’s time to buck up.

I ask myself now those same questions that pressed me a year ago. Will I have the strength of body and mind to endure what it takes to get ready for this long haul? Yet there is one glaring difference this time, the fall of 2010. Last year it had been thirty long years since I had been engaged in the sport. My body memories had faded and it was truly a brand-new experience. This year, I know only too well what suffering lies in wait.

It took that month of October 2010 to wrap my head around putting it all together again, especially the training. The entire year of extreme physical exertion, the steadfast focus, was all driven by the Dream. We had been building to a crescendo. No matter how tough the going got, the underlying resolve was impenetrable. But there was one twist of the plot I didn’t take a nanosecond to prepare for. And that was not even getting to give it a try.

One has long debated the journey versus the destination. When focused on a difficult, long-term journey, it’s the goal itself that dangles in front of you, that makes you dig deep, that keeps your pursuit strong, even in the face of tremendous adversity. For me, the question has always been whether the journey itself is going to be a worthwhile way for me to spend my precious time, destination or not. The catch-22 is inherent. You wouldn’t take this journey without the destination always looming large in your imagination, driving you onward. But I need to be clear that the work, the wearisome path, is honorable, edifying, and renders me proud in the end to have taken every punishing step, perhaps short of the final step. I never earned my PhD. But I don’t regret those years of study, those dialogues about the philosophies and the writings of Europe’s great nineteenth-century authors. My marriage to Nina failed in the end, but I don’t lament the years we spent in making a life together.

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