Ripples…

I’m doing the last of my personal training sessions in the pool. There is something absolutely magical about the smell of chlorine in the morning. A million years ago, I was on my high school swim team. I was not athletic, did not participate in other sports, and wasn’t particularly big on school spirit, but I’ve always loved to swim. 
     Some of my best childhood memories are in the water and my swim team nostalgia is so strong, it still permeates my dreams. I was deeply saddened when I realized recently that I can no longer swim laps. In addition to the arthritis in my knees and hips, my shoulder now clicks painfully when I try to rotate it. Yes, I can still tread and do water aerobics or even kickboard, but there’s just something different about cutting through the water doing laps - the flip turn off the wall. One of my goals was actually to be able to do a flip turn again, but now that doesn’t seem possible.
    This is why it’s important to allow our dreams to evolve. What we envision for ourselves today may not fit where we are at tomorrow and even though that can be sad and difficult, we owe it to ourselves to find our happiest selves in the moment. In the words of Lisa Hammond, “Sometimes on your way to a dream, you get lost and find a better one.”