I've had the pleasure the last couple of days--and for a couple more days, of scuba diving with my younger daughter, Hannah.
Hannah, who is 21, has been diving for well over half her life. Since she was 18, she's been a licensed dive instructor. With all that diving through the years she has accomplished something on the order of 500 dives. An impressive total.
I, though 34 years older, am much less experienced under the waves. I've been a certified diver and I have about 120 dives under my belt but I pale in comparison to Hannah.
One of the main things I've learned about diving is one of the hardest things for me to get, though it's one of the simplest.
Experiencing the undersea world is done at a slow speed.
You do not dart from reef to reef.
In fact, you barely even kick. You motivate yourself with a minimum of movement. This not only conserves your air-supply, it allows you to see the world you're only visiting, to take note of the infinitesimally small creatures and coral formations as well as the large.
Working in advertising and living in Manhattan, we have spent our whole lives getting places fast. We are comfortable when we are speeding. Normal speed feels, at best, languid.
The sea, however is a different world.
A world in which we are alien.
Especially alien if we move faster than we are meant to.
