The Woman who Tried to Climb the Lake

By Barbara De Angelis

Once there was a woman who spent her whole life climbing a very high mountain. She
began as a tiny child and could not remember at time before the mountain. Year after
year she would ascend the steep cliffs, and in the process, she became very good at
the motion of climbing. The muscles in her legs in her back grew strong, and after a
while, climbing felt as natural as breathing. As time passed, and she went higher and
higher, she didn't even have to try and climb anymore-her body did it automatically.

At last, one day, the woman reached the top of the mountain. She was overjoyed with
her achievement and couldn't wait to start out on the next portion of her travels, and
to conquer the next mountain. As she looked out over the horizon, she saw a beautiful
blue lake, stretching sideways as far as her eye could see. But being a climber of all
her life, the woman had only lived on the mountains, so she had never seen a lake,
and in fact, did not even know what a lake was. She watched the strange expanse
before her and concluded that it must be the unusual kind of blue mountain. Since
the only way to continue her journey was to crossover the odd-looking blue form, she
decided that was what she must do.

So, the mountain woman walked up to the water, and began trying to “climb the lake”.
At first, she couldn't understand why she wasn't making any progress, and in fact,
was exhausting herself. So, she mustered all the energy in her strong body and tried
to “climb” even harder, placing one leg in front of the other, using her hands to
attempt to grasps the “blue rocks”. But her efforts were useless. She kept falling over
and wasn't going anywhere.

Just about this time, when the mountain woman felt like giving up, she noticed a
person floating by on top of the blue lake, gently gliding his body through the water
with the slightest movements of his arms and legs.

“What are you doing, my friend?” He called out to her.

“What does it look like?” she answered, her face flustered with embarrassment.

“I’m climbing the lake.”

“Good woman,” the man of the lake replied, “don't you know that you can cross a lake
by climbing it? The only way to travel through water is to swim.”

“But I am such a marvelous climber!” The mountain woman insisted.

“I’ve spent my whole life learning to climb. I can climb any mountain; I can reach the top
of any peak. Surely there must be some way I can climb the lake.”

“I'm sure you are an excellent climber,” the man of the lake answered politely.
“But that skill won't help you here in the water. It took one kind of wisdom to get you to
the top of the mountain-you had to make your power stronger than the mountain. Now
you need to learn another kind of wisdom to get across the lake-you need to surrender
to the power of the water an allow its force to be stronger than you. You don't have to try
hard anymore. In fact, the less you try, the better you’ll do!”

And so, it was the man of the lake taught the woman of the mountain how to swim. At
first, she splashed and thrashed around in the water, for she was accustomed to using
very strong energy in her climbing. But her teacher was very patient, and slowly she
learned to float on the water’s surface and allow the waves and the wind to carry her
gently forward, until she was hardly doing anything at all.

And that's how the mountain woman learned that the strength of surrender was just
as powerful as the strength of pushing forward.