INKTHINK #3: Vessel

Note: back in October 2021, I challenged myself to use the Inktober prompts to create one black-and-white piece of art each day. I would then learn how to vectorize them in Adobe Illustrator and make some cool digital art. Two things happened in the meantime: 1) Illustrator’s learning curve proved steeper than I could find time or focus for, and 2) I started writing pieces alongside them as a writing exercise. INKTHINK is a series combining the two for the next 31 days.

You may be familiar with the Freshman 15. My first year of college, through a combination of sleep deprivation, overwork, and the toxic availability of all the foods at the cafeteria, I gained nearly 40 pounds. I didn’t really pick up on it first. Being 6’2”, it’s easy for that extra weight to spread throughout your body, and for muscles to nudge up against fat in such a way that almost looks like tone (but is, in fact, just muscle against a bigger wall of fat than you realize). So I tried different things. I worked out. I tried to not eat everything in the cafeteria. I flipped through ad after ad of overpriced fashion to find workout ideas in Men’s Health magazines. But college life made it difficult and it wasn’t until after I graduated that I actually learned how calories worked. From there, my focus became one both solemn and silly: I wanted to be the most efficient version of myself. My rationale? One day I would have kids, and I did not want to be sucking wind chasing them all over the house, falling off of tree forts, and generally finding new ways to get hurt in the safest of situations. And, of course, there was an element of vanity in that I wanted to look better in pictures.

I then looked for shortcuts. I went to a climbing gym, thinking a random night of bouldering would get me closer to a Spiderman physique (it did not). I went to CrossFit for a month, thinking it would transform me with some kind of natural steroids (I only got debilitating soreness). I dabbled in a little bit of everything, not realizing until much, much later in life that everything generally works, but the only things that truly work are the ones you are consistent with (a very annoying truth). So I futzed around a lot, fooling myself of progress over and over again. It wasn’t until I read Tim Ferris’ 4-Hour Body, a book full of ideas for the shortcut-minded like myself, that I stumbled upon something that didn’t necessarily make me any leaner, but made me feel far more efficient: Total Immersion.

The gist of the program, developed by Terry McLaughlin, is that your aim should always be to be as efficient a swimming vessel as possible. You’re not generating power. You’re making yourself as sleek and aerodynamic as possible so that there’s little power needed. This is how you go far. This is how you do laps upon laps and somehow emerge energized rather than exhausted. It feels counterintuitive, like something a sloth would come up with. Like someone was going to eventually tell me to just lay and float in the water because we’re all gonna die anyways.

But after I got over my initial skepticism, I gave it a shot. And I learned very quickly why my swimming took so much out of me; why I’d feel my muscles working, but in a way that felt deeply inefficient. For most of my life, my body was not balanced in the water. My feet would often sink behind me, creating more drag, and I’d have to madly pull with my arms, stroke after stroke, only able to complete a lap or two at a time before stopping. With Total Immersion, I learned to reach for the floor of the pool. Again, it felt counterintuitive, but it miraculously evened out my body and the slightest, gentlest strokes suddenly had me moving with the steady, seamless pace of a shark through the water. It felt like a magic trick. It still does.

Nowhere else do I feel as efficient a vessel as the pool. No matter how many creaks or aches I may have in my body, there’s always the chance to glide with a grace I can’t find elsewhere. There’s just something special about holding your arms together between your ears, looking down, and pushing off the wall as you cut through the water with frictionless motion. You soar over the bottom of the pool like an aquatic ghost. Whenever I would swim at the local YMCA, I’d look at the lanes next to me and see people of all shapes and sizes doing their own thing. There would always be someone who looked a little beaten down by life, who found a kind of cathartic, necessary relief in a place that did not punish them for the things they did or did not do. Here, they could float. They could glide. They could dream of smoother journeys and healthier futures. They could just be.

And that’s the thing. So much of efficiency comes from not fighting the environment, but moving smoothly with it. Through recognizing when you’re doing too much and thinking about how you can be like Terry McLaughlin, gliding through the water, free as an underwater bird, always searching while always feeling at home.