27th. December 2013 – 17:00: What went down must come up.

It is a cliché to say that what goes up must come down, it is equally true if not also clichéd to acknowledge that what goes down must come up. Don’t just take my word for it, just ask STELA, AKA STELLA without whom the five point ascent would be impossible to remember if not achieve.

Again I won’t bore you with what the acronym stands for. For that, refer again to:

<Scuba Diving Acronyms>

Depending on whether you accept that 'L' stands for 'look' AND 'listen', then 5 characters in the acronym match the 5 points that need to be noted when ascending. That said, as acronyms goes, there are 2 'L's in look and listen when last I checked. So the acronym really should be STELLA. The question therefore should be, is this actually a six point ascent and has the math not as yet been SORTED?

If we go by the same argument as the five point descent (refer to my post on the five point descent) and drop the 'T' and 'A', we are left with the essential truth about the now four point ascent and that is, after you have gotten all the skills SORTED and even though you've turned in a less than STELLA but passable performance in the sand-pit, you emerge from the water without the need for a hard SELL on scuba diving as it would be a bit like preaching to the already baptized.

So you ask yourself why you did it. Surely not for its own sake; as mind blowing as that may be. I think that it is because you begin to understand what it is about human nature and yourself that wants to forever push at the boundaries of your own identity. You start to understand that there is something more to it when you know that you don’t really have to or indeed need to rip your mask off underwater, then learn how to put it back on and clear it, yet against all intuition you did precisely that. You don't really have to or need to know what it feels like to run out of air in the middle of breathing in and have to depend on your buddy to assist. Yet against all logic you did it. You don’t have to know what it feels like to sip the dregs of a free flowing second stage, yet against all common sense, you did it. In fact, you don't need to do any of these things to live a full and valuable life. Yet you did. Why? It's too simple to dismiss it as an egoistic adrenaline rush and leave it at that. Something more profound is happening I think. It is a journey into the self. Self improvement always exists just beyond the edges of the known self. Where you have never been before is where the thalamus operates. It is where risk and mitigation are the yin and yang of existence. I for one am glad I went there and returned to tell the tale in these humble pages.

You pass from sand-pit to the sea or, was that from the frying pan to the fire?