"If you were a fish, what fish would you be?"
Without missing a beat, he said "An electric eel --- I glow in the DARK, baby!"
He was zipping and zooming! Wild and free and in joy-filled exuberance like a child bursting onto the playground. He was swimming ocean deep in a sea of love!
Then he turned the tables on me. "What kind of fish would YOU be?" he asked.
Startled, my first thought was -- I'm not even a fish at all. Maybe a piece of driftwood. But then I thought about how he said I was always talking bad about myself and how 'unattractive' that was. That stung; but he was right.
So I tried to think of a kind of LIVING thing that was barely there, and lived in the water.
Ah HA! A BARNACLE! They ARE alive, but....they're not going anywhere. That was me.
I replied, "Oh, I'm not even a fish! I'm a.... a... barnacle. On the underside of a raft. On Gilligan's Island. It's been a LONG time since I've 'seen the ocean'...."
He laughed uproariously! Loving my sense of humor. And he knew it was a struggle and stretch to think of myself in a positive way - even that such an exaggerated example was a stretch for me. For normally, I was putting myself down. Way down.
As I watched him swim to his heart's delight, I sighed and thought out loud, "I sure would love to swim WITH you in that water. In those depths. Joyful like you. But....(it'll never happen...)."
All at once, he had a solution!
I saw myself in a huge, wide and swift current --- the EAC! The Eastern Australia Current! Just like in the movie "Finding Nemo". And he said "You're a seaturtle. Go with the flow! Go to the depths! Feel the speed, feel the motion -- GO with it! Ride the current!"
And I saw myself -- a huge sea turtle hurtling along.....not flapping and straining to swim fast. No - I was BEING CARRIED ALONG. No strain at all. I just had to trust the current, and then get off of it where I needed to.
"REMEMBER!" he sternly emphasized, "You're a SEA turtle, not a LAND tortoise; a SEA TURTLE!"
"Right!" I replied with confidence I mustered up for the moment.
Maybe being a sea turtle isn't that hard. I CAN swim to awesome depths and go far, far away. If I just get in the current and trust myself to the journey, and .... go with the flow.