Every September, a migration of Whale Sharks moves off the Caribbean coast of Mexico. Actually a fish, with the shape of a shark and the feeding habits of a whale, they are the only members of their genus and their family. At 40 feet long, weighing 60,000 pounds, Whale Sharks are the largest fish in the sea. I am certain that swimming with these school bus-sized fish is one of the most incredible things a person can do. That’s why I return year after year to play with them.Our boat trip to swim with Whale Sharks was a two hour search out to sea. The deep dark teal water was anything but calm. Flying fish scattered out away from the boat’s wake. Spooked up in flocks, they transformed from fish to birds as they left the sea for the air, sailing like skipping stones inches from the surface before diving back into the waves.
On whatever level you look at it, we either create the experience we want, or we draw to us the experience with our intention or expectations, or experiences simply go how you think they will go. But have you ever noticed that many things we do in our lives, we do not do alone?
Conscious of it or not, we all come to a situation with a desired outcome. Not everyone has similar expectations and intentions about how the event will go. This explains how several people can show up at the exact same party and have a very different experience. Those who attend the party for the drugs, will find them. Those who go to the party to get very drunk, will do so. And those who go to connect with friends, may miss the drugs all together. If I attend the party with a friend who feels it will be boring, they’ll be looking for reasons that this is a waste of time. The trick is for me to not adopt my friend’s attitude so that I can still have fun while they are yawning, inspecting their fingernails in a corner.
We are all choosing the nature of our experience. I feel this variation is fantastic, but I wish not to allow the experience other people are having dictate my experience. I can acknowledge that they are having their own experience, and allow mine to be exactly what I want it to be.
On the bumpy boat ride out to sea, I refocused my intention of finding the Whale Sharks, swimming with many of them and having an incredible time.
I laughed out loud as the boat leapt over waves, crashing and booming against the face of the sea. It was such a violent ride that I had to stand up and hold on to the boat’s metal frame to keep my back from popping out of alignment. I chose to see the fun in the jarring outing. Like riding a speeding mechanical bull, the advanced challenge is to smile while you are there. I smile because Life is often a mirror of our attitude.
Other people on the boat became sea sick, and I moved to give them plenty of room to have their experience, watching the horizon for sign of the whale fish we were searching for.
The couple next to us, clutching the collars of their lifejackets, asked, “Have you done this before?”
I smiled and nodded.
“Have the Whale Sharks ever eaten people on tours like this?”
“No,” I said, laughing. “They eat plankton like other whales. They have baleen instead of teeth. Last year I remember thinking that I would fit in that mouth, but certainly not on purpose.”
The wife smiled back at me nervously. “Did you see any other kinds of sharks out here last year?”
I explained how many times I have scuba dove in these waters, and have met very few predators. I deflected her fear with stories of the nurse sharks, who remind me of giant salamanders with their round noses, who will lie still and act hypnotized when you roll them over and rub their belly, like frogs.
I wondered for a brief moment how to let this woman have her own experience. I obviously was going to be thrilled to swim next to 40 foot long Whale Sharks.
But if she decided to be eaten by another kind of shark, I’d have to not participate. She’d be on her own there. By not agreeing with her, by not swapping Great White stories oozing with drama, I was continuing to hold my own intention and clarified that her experience may be different from mine.
Later, after swimming with 14 spotted fish the size of a bus, she traded her fear for awe and came up with a huge grin under her snorkel and mask shouting, “This is SO COOL!”
And really, I had to agree with her there. The Whale Sharks were just as gentle and speckled as I remembered them. All other thoughts immediately stopped when I was swimming next to these huge beasts. It is a wonder my heart did not stop too, and that I remembered to breathe, for I was not aware of myself at all, only of how incredible the whales were. All I could do is stare and study them as they opened their square noses to gulp in grey clouds of plankton. In vain, I tried to kick harder to keep up with their tall pointed tail. And I giggled when they turned around and swam back towards me, doing switch backs in the water.
I asked the boat captain if we could stop and swim with them again. In exasperated Spanish he told me, “But you already have 8 times! We have lunch ready. Do you never eat?”
So now that I understand that everyone has a different experience at the same party of life, I can start to apply that knowledge.
For example, on my next dive, I really wanted to see an octopus, because they fascinate me. When I told my dive master this, he told me, “Don’t get your hopes up. I have never seen octopi in the daytime. Only on night dives.”
I understand that he has dove right here, nearly every day of his adult life, that he knows these dive sites like watery rooms in his own home. And when he says he knows what is or is not in them, he’s probably right. He won’t see any octopi in the day time.
Sure enough, after we descended, he was swimming ahead of me and missed the orange Day Octopus hiding in the shipwreck. However, I was able to take a photo for him. Its always neat when someone can show you something new about the world you know so well.
Now, when I am heading into new situations, new locations, or new parties, so to speak, I acknowledge that I can have the exact experience I want to have. I can refrain from picking up the expectations of others, or their fears. I don’t have to agree and adopt how they say it will be, and I can differentiate that is how it will be for them and allow them their own experience. For mine, is a completely different kind of party.
