During the dream time of the first quarter of this year I’ve been reflecting on how to bring a vision of the adjacent possible into the rooted center of daily awareness. The “adjacent possible” is a term my husband, Bill, encountered, suggesting there are multiple histories behind the wide diversity of experience and understanding that yields the rainbow of future possibilities coming to life in each moment, beside multiple ways of understanding consciousness and time itself. How the future may play out is a mystery rising from that vast confluence and the repercussions of the unique reactions to it from all beings of Earth. Coupled with another term I recently encountered, “imagination activism,” from, How to Fall in Love with the Future, by Rob Hopkins, the adjacent possible holds keys to hidden doors in the mind, behind which the capacity to suddenly leap into collaborative commitment to regenerate Earth life lies waiting.

It turns out that in order to connect widely and wonderfully with the rest of the natural world, diving deep into the heart of personal experience may be the counterintuitive path we all must take. Contemplating these ideas, I’ve been drawn to a number of books that have become helpful companions, fortifying courage to help trigger that journey. They are listed at the end of this newsletter. Now that you know the background, get yourself a cup of tea, draw up a chair and prepare yourself for a story about how I learned to befriend the ocean, the first teeming source of adjacent possibilities all growing together into this living moment.

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First things first. The following slightly more than two-page introduction is offered to keep you afloat in the meaning of the story that comes after. So here goes: Although at the level of living molecules scientists have proven we are not separate from the natural world, we perceive aspects of Earth, like the ocean, as though they are separate from humanity because the selves we subconsciously construct and identify as real and continuous, by virtue of memory, language, and conditioning, will cease to exist if we fail to understand, respect and respond wisely to the boundaries between such vastly different entities as one human body and the living ocean. The ocean seems overwhelmingly powerful and other when viewed as separate. Learning to listen to, perceive and respect the varied power and gentleness of this mightiest of water bodies, without anthropomorphizing it, is very difficult if not impossible using the English language. However, since playing with words and ideas keeps me grounded and curious, I can’t resist trying, especially since I know the ocean as a wildly wonderful friend to my spirit, as long as I approach its power with humility, wonder and curiosity, remaining mindful of the boundary where my body’s physical limitations can meet the immense power and mystery of the ocean’s far greater energetic, regenerative capacity, in friendship. The story about learning that humility follows this introduction.

The same set of skills is needed to navigate the ocean of ideas in which our human minds swim in this age of the Internet and AI. Learning to swim through the ponds and oceans of ideas and emotional experiences we encounter throughout life is something we all must face. The first lesson, as with the kind of ocean that variously laps at or erodes beaches where we physically swim, is learning how to stay afloat on the surface in order to avoid drowning, physically in oceans like the Atlantic and Pacific, or mentally in the ocean of ideas breaking on the shores of our minds and hearts when we choose to ride the waves of information on the Internet.

Floating was one of the primary skills needed to pass a test at a local pool when I was six or seven, allowing access to the deep end where the lure of the diving board called to young daredevils like me. The first step was to lie face down in the water on your stomach, the “dead man’s float,” not an encouraging name for a method to prevent drowning. However, a dead man’s float allows a relaxed body to effortlessly rest after a deep breath is taken and held, a relatively short time, but long enough to experience comfort while lying face down in the water.

Discovering that your body floats when you simply hold your breath can be a revelation. Yes, legs and arms may sink, but lungs act like helium balloons, keeping torsos effortlessly afloat on top as long as the breath taken is deep and the body relaxed. It helps to learn this skill in shallow water where the bottom can easily be touched. Trusting the air in the lungs enough to lie back onto the water, face up, is the next step in learning relaxation in the water, instilling an experiential knowing that instead of pulling you down, deep water can buoy you up, if you know your physical strengths and limitations and learn to use them to work with it rather than defend against it.

Successful floating on your back requires remaining still without sinking, and floating in the ocean provides the added buoyancy of salt, which helps anyone to effortlessly remain prone in the water without effort, as long as relaxation is maintained. Relaxing onto a bed of rhythmically rocking ocean waves with an endless visual field of blue, cloud-studded sky above is about the most restful thing I know, even for me, who must hold my breath, raise my arms over my head to tilt my lungs to the surface of my chest, and do a gentle flutter kick to keep my body on the surface of fresh water when breathing out before breathing in again to stay afloat.

Finding calming pools of relaxation and joy in the ocean of ideas on the Internet requires similar skills. Both require paying attention to the sensations of the body and its energetic experience, which includes physical sensations connected to emotions. It can be restful to float on your back in fresh water, if you can relax. If you’re afraid of sinking in any kind of water, muscles tighten up, including the diaphragm, limiting the ability to take a deep enough breath to keep the body relaxed and afloat no matter how many gentle flutter kicks you do.

Learning to float is crucial to swimming through any ocean because only in learning to float without thinking is it possible to respect, feel comfortable with and ultimately befriend deep water of all kinds. That physical knowing becomes intuitive through experience in conjunction with good, practical advice, curiosity and willingness to risk engagement with new ideas. However, we all have inherited beliefs that enforce different mental boundaries on imagination and new ideas. Finding and exploring the quality and reasons why those very different thought boundaries were built is a story for another day. Instead, read on for today’s story and try to nourish an imaginary seed of connection between learning to swim in physical oceans and in oceans of ideas.

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As I became a more confident swimmer, my relationship with the Atlantic Ocean on New England’s coast began to deepen as well, teaching important lessons that left indelible marks on my psyche and great respect for its immense power right beside its capacity for gentle playfulness. Swimming became a favorite activity, especially in the summer, but also in college when lap swimming before sleep in a dimly lit pool recentered attention in my body, relieving its built up tension after a long day of studying. By Sophomore year I had passed the water safety instructor course, which gave me a new way to earn money as a life guard.

A few years later my family laid out towels and a picnic on a favorite beach one blustery June day. It was a beach where I’d spent countless hours developing a physically exhilarating relationship with powerful ocean waves, learning when to hop up into a rising curl of water to ride it, head just beyond the breaking foam, all the way into the sand, or at least into the shallows where the bigger waves tumbled me in a somersault before sucking the water back into themselves to rise again in another breaker. There were rarely more than a few families spread along the shore of that beach, which had a rip tide that would float you steadily sideways if you weren’t careful. There was no lifeguard.

On the day in question, the beach was completely empty, except for my family, largely because it was windy and cool. However, none of us wanted to be anywhere else, whether in the water, walking the waterline searching for rocks and shells, building sand castles, or just reading peacefully while listening to the waves, even if bundled up in jackets for comfort. By then, my family imagined I was kin to a fish because I spent beach days almost continuously body-surfing, melting into a relationship with the water that momentarily erased the sense of time and separation of body, ocean and breath, soothing and captivating all my senses in the process. While falling asleep at night afterward the waves seemed to continue their rhythmic vibration in my body lying comfortably in bed, listening to the same rhythm as sound floating in through the open window.

Three sets of breakers steadily moved toward shore in continuous lines that windy day, which meant the undertow would be stronger, but it didn’t seem much different from other times we’d had no trouble body surfing. I had the bright idea to swim out to the farthest set of breakers in an attempt to ride all three into the beach, an unbelievably long ride I imagined. No one else gave that idea a thought, knowing I was qualified as a life guard, so I waded slowly into waist deep water, adjusting gradually to the cold, then dove under the first line of breakers and stroked to the second. Diving under that and positioning myself for the curl of the third in very deep water, I looked back to notice my family now appeared slightly larger than ants on the beach and surely couldn’t see or hear me. Nothing seemed amiss, however, until I tried to ride that farthest breaker back to shore.

Instead of taking me toward the sand, the ocean pulled me farther out to sea when I stopped swimming to ride the wave. My heartbeat immediately increased as the danger of the situation began to dawn. Remembering from earlier experience how panic would only make matters worse, I tried to remain calm and swam as hard as I could straight back toward shore, soon discovering that my best effort was only maintaining the same distance away. That’s when the extreme danger of the situation became starkly clear.

Luckily, realizing there was a good chance I might drown, my adrenal system brought all my energy into that moment in a mysterious way I’d experienced once before in the top branches of a tall pine tree bending in the wind. A sudden calm, coupled with razor sharp focus, joined the adrenaline surging through my system. I knew I needed to quickly do something different before my energy completely dissipated in the cold water. No one would know if I failed until it was too late.

Attention immediately went to the breath, the most critical physical function for staying alive and somehow getting back to dry sand. Continuing to focus on breathing steadily to consciously resist panic, a memory from water safety class suddenly surfaced. Mentioned only in a passing reference to ocean swimming from an instructor teaching in a pool in the Midwest, he said that when swimming toward shore through a line of breakers, one should swim diagonally to their breaking line, which cuts the power of the undertow that will otherwise pull everything out to sea beyond a certain distance from the beach. That instant of complete focus, powered by a huge surge of adrenaline the likes of which had created problems for me in the past, as a child waking in the dark after a nightmare, or when trying to perform in front of a crowd. This time it had worked for me, bringing quickly to mind everything I’d ever known about swimming.

Immediately I refocused every ounce of strength and attention on breathing steadily and swimming diagonally to the waves in the opposite direction of the sideways pull of the rip tide. Continually refocusing attention away from the fear surging through my body, anchoring it instead to each breath and arm stroke, I used every ounce of energy and strength I had. Swimming harder and faster than I imagined I could, pausing rarely to briefly lift my head to maintain a diagonal trajectory and assess any progress toward shore, slowly, very slowly, lungs screaming, I eked my way closer to a place where my feet could touch bottom. With immense relief I eventually rode the first set of breakers onto dry sand.

Walking back to where my family was picnicking and making sand castles, Mom asked, “Did you have a good swim?” Bending to grab a towel, I answered, “I did,” before collapsing onto the warm sand. Only much later did I tell her the story of that swim, not wanting to scare her and knowing that I had deeply learned my lesson. Considering the experience as I rested on my back, it also seemed that my parents’ confidence was well placed. My training had saved me in the end, despite the dangerously stupid mistake I’d made that landed me in a life or death situation. Ultimately, their faith in my swimming ability was justified, but never again did I venture beyond one line of multiple breakers, deeply knowing that catching that one curl at just the right time is more than enough thrill. Greed for more can kill. Physical experience is the most powerful teacher of limits, which I was only just beginning to learn that day.

Tumbling within a roiling wave as it breaks on the edge of the beach in a way that provides joy rather than terror requires guidance and practice, learning a kind of knowing in relationship between body and wave through experience. The same can be said about tumbling through the chaotic breaking waves of information swirling through the internet, breaking daily on the shores of consciousness. Learning how to remain comfortable within the wild confusion of often frightening forces, within either dynamic, calls for consciously choosing connection to the inner wisdom we’re all born with before we learn to fear. In time, the process of connecting with that inner space of freedom can become a dependable rudder to navigate competing waves of information and emotional response within the chaotic outer movement of life, steering the energy that rises in response toward carefully chosen engagement with the demands of any particular moment in any particular ocean.

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Books to Assist in Staying Afloat

How to Fall in Love with the Future: A Time Traveler’s Guide to Changing the World, by Rob Hopkins, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2025

The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change, by Rebecca Solnit, Haymarket Books, 2026

Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future, by Patty Krawec, Broadleaf Books, 2022

Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane, W.W. Norton and Company, 2025