(Rough) Lesson Learned.

A dive trip last weekend came with a twist. The twist came in indeed a rough way, but it was a lesson learned nonetheless. It was my first diving trip after my first openwater test last December. Within the list, I was taken in as one of the divers, instead of one of the students - and with that I supposedly knew more. Yet, at the end of the trip, it all came down with a fact that one could never knew enough. And I am glad I learned that in such an early phase of my dive into the deep.

The day started like any other at Marina, Ancol - the northern part of Jakarta. It was an openwater trip for the recent students. I wonder if the students were as freaked out as I was on my openwater trip: I was not at all confident with my techniques and skill, my dive profile looks more like a stock exchange graph and I was not sure which part of my body need to balance which part. Being a diver with only one batch differences - I took all the words of the instructor in and react as if it was my first time dive. In a way, I felt better listening their openwater instructions, it helped affirmed what I knew and made me felt relieved that what I thought was lacking, was correct. Then, as we had our lunch after our first dive that Saturday, the reality of being in a world - which was not ours - reached to us.

A fellow diving trip team - who left the pier at the approximate same time with us - just had an incident. One of the member of their trip had asthma as he snorkelled down near the pier in the island. News move fast in a small island like Pramuka. The pier was the main port to the island and lay right in front of our inn. We walked right pass through it everytime we depart for dives, and we had been looking at people snorkelling or having a dive brief before going to the real water. The leader of the team happened to be an old friend of my dive instructors. One of his instructors was a wife of one of our instructor - although she was handling another group from their team at the time it happened. The incident lead to the worst: death. The grief grew bigger when I learnt that a good friend's brother was in their team, and the victim was his good friend. They were on duty for a programme that captured underwater world and a couple days prior we were talking about how he was travelling around the most divine parts of Indonesia's underwater scene and how his brother had been thoroughly in love with the job and the chances.

There was a brief moment of shock that night at our dinner talks. The words had appeared to the media, and man did they brought the stories to their own extent. With all the speculation going around, we agreed the most wise was to wait for the authority to finish learning the case and accept the official statement before we could evaluate what went wrong. I was lucky that my seniors took the it-could-happened-to-us incident in a wise manner. There was no overpanicking amongst the new openwater students, although backing off from the test that weekend might have been acceptable. In a weird way, it took myself to the next level in living: accepting my limits. As, each diver managed to have their own personal profile - a combination of that many elements - that one would never be exactly similar to another. I used to think that these profile refer to your diving skill and how good you are in it. And since it has never been a solitude sport, it is inavoidable to compare to take it as how good your dive are when your limits does not meet your buddy/ team. In my experience, I took all my limits as my weaknesses - when most of the time stood for a whole different thing.

I took my time on my next dive and continued to identify my profile as a diver. I am a slow descender, but I will get down eventually. I would have cramps every now and then due to the new fins and my untrained calves and ankles - I had promised my calves that they will be ready for the next dive, so help me God. I still have to work my buoyancy and have a more subtle diving profile, and my jaw tends to ache thus I need to take of my first stage gear once in a while.

Ah, this dive thing had been harder than I thought, but as it was said as we close the trip, we had been fortunate enough to live and dive and live even more. The world down there were surely beautiful, yet one could easily get lost in the deep. And it was us to know our limit that the world under was not and will never be ours. As we ascend to the surface we brought in our own findings that go beyond the nudibranches, the mantas, the sharks, and the moray eels we'd met. Although some merely acknowledge the physical encounters, the stories that were told is a lesson of gratification, of learning to cherish the details in the world that was not ours.

As for us, humans, we tend to stop cherishing our everydays. I wish we could start diving there too.

*With my deepest condolences to Mr. Ahmad Zakir and his family - of whom I do not know personally. As much as I wish things were led differently last weekend, I am sure the memory of him lives on in his loved ones.

Part of the images are courtesy of Edwin Tutkey.

Kepulauan Seribu, February 2012.