Pools with shallow sections have always felt dishonest to me. They exist for safety, for ease, for comfort—for play. They let you believe you’re in the water without ever actually surrendering to it. You can wade, splash, and pretend, but your feet are still firmly planted on the bottom. There’s no risk. And without risk, there’s no truth.
The deep end doesn’t lie. The deep end doesn’t negotiate. It demands respect. The second you step into it, you know the rules have changed. The water no longer supports your fantasy; it strips you bare. It doesn’t care about what you say you can do—it asks you to prove it. And if you can’t, it will show you, without hesitation, exactly where you stand.
Thats why I don’t support a shallow section in the swimming pool. Water should be deep. Sure, someone who doesn’t know how to swim might get it in his head to try, realize it’s a serious thing, and then flail about dramatically as a prelude to drowning. Right before going under he will know everything he could not have possibly learned in knee-deep water. He might also realize the whole point of the deep end is that you don’t go in alone.
That’s the whole point isn’t it. That moment before going under. Pure honest clarity. Delusions of grandeur stripped away and you finally understand what’s at stake. Life…
Struggle is inevitable, drowning is always possible, probable even. But survival, growth, LIVING are all bound to connection. We yearn it, we need it, human beings are hardwired as social creatures. But you’ll never learn that in shallow water. The deep end teaches everything, but only if you accept the danger and reach out for someone who will make the jump with you.
The hardest part isn’t stepping into the deep. It’s admitting you can’t stay afloat forever on your own. It’s asking for someone to stand on the edge with you, to leap beside you. And here’s the truth that burns: asking someone to jump into the deep with you is not the same as asking them to learn to breathe under water.
Opening up isn’t about pulling another soul down with your weight. It isn’t about drowning together. It’s about trusting that you can both fight, both flail, and both rise toward the surface—side by side. Connection doesn’t mean transferring your suffering onto someone else. It means refusing to disappear into silence, refusing to go under without reaching out.
That’s where we go wrong. We confuse vulnerability with burden. We stay in the shallow end, afraid of pulling others into our struggle, so we never let them in at all. But the truth is, nobody learns what it means to live in safety. No one understands depth by keeping their head dry. If you want to know what matters—love, loyalty, resilience—you only learn it by taking that plunge, together.
Still waters run deep. Not because they are calm, but because they conceal weight, current, force. Life is the same. On the surface you can appear steady, composed, unshaken. But beneath, the pressure is real. And sooner or later, you have to decide: do you stay where it’s safe, or do you risk the truth hiding in the deep?
The deep end doesn’t promise survival. It promises honesty. It promises clarity. And if you’re lucky—it promises the saving grace of a hand reaching for yours in the water.
Because the shallow end is a lie. The deep end is where you finally learn to live.
