Breath

by Tim Winton

I couldn’t have put words to it as a boy, but later I understood what seized my imagination that day. How strange it was to see men do something beautiful. Something pointless and elegant, as though nobody saw or cared.

but for me there was still the outlaw feeling of doing something graceful, as if dancing on water was the best and bravest thing a man could do.

And though I’ve lived to be an old man with my own share of happiness for all the mess I made, I still judge every joyous moment, every victory and revelation against those few seconds of living.

It’s funny, but you never really think much about breathing. Until it’s all you ever think about.

It’s easy for an old man to look back and see the obvious, how wasted youth and health and safety are on the young who spurn such things, to be dismayed by the risks you took, but as a youth you do sense that life renders you powerless by dragging you back to it, breath upon breath upon breath in an endless capitulation to biological routine, and that the human will to control is as much about asserting power over your own body as exercising it on others.

You’ll be out there, thinkin: am I gunna die? Am I fit enough for this? Do I know what I’m doin? Am I solid? Or am I just . . . ordinary?

Shit, he said as a great, green glut of water poured up at our feet. I wonder what the ordinary people are doin today.

Animals react out of instinct, Sando continued. Like they’re always on automatic. We’ve got plenty of that, too. But our minds complicate things, slow us down. We’re always calculating the odds, measuring the consequences. But you can train your mind to live with fear and deal with the anticipation.

I was in my thirties before I learnt that I too would prefer not to see what I could no longer have.

They probably don’t understand this, but it’s important for me to show them that their father is a man who dances – who saves lives and carries the wounded, yes, but who also does something completely pointless and beautiful, and in this at least he should need no explanation.