Why We Swim

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Swimming is, by our human definition, a constant state of not drowning. The Oxford English Dictionary emphasizes the propulsion of the body through water with one’s limbs and a position afloat on the water’s surface. To drown is to die through immersion or submersion—the body under the surface—in water and inhalation of that water. We know from the most ancient of times that the boundary between the two states of being is thin; it grows permeable when we’re not looking. Today....It’s more quiet around here. Paul and I needed to slow things down for medical and aging needs. But on occasion ( minus covid), we host events on holidays. It takes energy to push your body through the water—and your body loses the same amount of energy in the process.

Every year, 372,000 people die from drowning. That’s more than forty people every hour, every day. In 2014, the World Health Organization released a global report on drowning to launch the first worldwide strategic prevention effort. Their goal: to target drowning as a public health challenge. Each week we had a waitlist of at least 20 people wanting to attend. We only wanted around 20 people each week. Is it better to float or to sink? If you're a boat, it's certainly better to do one or the other! Unfortunately,

The swim was a hugely personal thing for Friðporsson, traumatic and shaded with the death of his friends and thrusting him into a spotlight he never sought. Although it is only implied in the book, he overcame his reservations about speaking publicly because of the sincerity of Tsui’s curiosity and keenness to get at the heart of the mystery of swimming.

I really liked this book and the way it’s been put together. Each chapter functions as an essay on a different topic with the end of each chapter leading logically into the subject of the next chapter. The writing is fluid and I especially loved the personal remembrances of the writer. As a child who grew up surfing the waves without knowing how to (officially) swim, I felt a kinship with the author. I know what it’s like to be enveloped in a sneak wave as a child, unable to get out, only to be rescued by a sibling. I know what it’s like to come home from a hard day at work, hitting the beach in the dark, with no lifeguards or other humans around, hoping the lifeform touching me under the water is not going to eat me. I know what it’s like to detest an enclosed swimming center, feeling claustrophobic until I can get into a pool that is open to the elements. Bonnie Tsui captures the joy, peril and utility of swimming, within her family and across civilizations . . . The breadth of her reporting and grace of her writing make the elements of Why We Swim move harmoniously as one."I could fill a water event at my house in an hour....that’s how in demand this water-pleasure social - non- eating- non drinking - no clothes necessary - respectful of other & whispering voices is. It’s quite late into this kaleidoscopic exploration of why human beings are drawn to water that Bonnie Tsui lets slip that she saved a child from drowning in her years as a teenage lifeguard. “Those eyes, underwater, big as dinner plates,” she remembers, of the seconds when she successfully located and saved the child in the crowded murk of a summer pool. We swim, and we get out from under the thumb of the everyday. “There’s a giddiness to being in that water,” Kim observes. “It connects with a playfulness that we forget about as adults.” I think about the way that the serious-looking older man in the pool this morning dove under the lanes on his way out, spiraling down to the bottom, arms outstretched, as if he had all the time in the world. And I think about children in the pool during afternoon family swim, their elation so palpable. Swimming is a way for us to remember how to play. I’ve come to appreciate open water—an ocean, a lake big enough to generate its own waves—as its own animal.

As much as she is asking why we swim, Tsui is asking why she swims. Her story begins with water: her parents met at a swimming pool in Hong Kong (her father was a lifeguard, her mother, Tsui writes, “the bikini-clad beauty”). Tsui began swimming at five and the memories she has of her, her brother and her parents swimming are some of her fondest memories. Swimming is very much a part of her parents’ relationship. Tsui writes:The only thing better than reading Bonnie Tsui’s writing about swimming is swimming itself—and both are sublime. Why We Swim is an aquatic tour de force, a captivating story filled with adventure, meditation, and celebration.” Rain or shine.... water people took dips in the cold plunge, relaxed in dry heat of the sauna...used the outdoor shower....and got addicted to social connecting in water. Some of the benefits of swimming derive, ironically, from daring to come as close as we can to this very fight for survival. That’s the sublime: the awe and the terror, together. Those moments of panic, the electric flashes of fear, are elucidating, exhilarating. The act of getting in is a small defiance of death itself.