Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 125 posts

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#71

Post by lm28469 »

namanyayg wrote: post #54
lm28469 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are taught and continually retaught that discipline and hard work are the keys to success in life. Maybe we should work on that presupposition first. If we're talking about career and material success it's probably true, but these very rarely bring true lasting happiness. You also have to look at who's telling you to "work hard" and why it's in their interest for you to do so. Imho once you go above a very low t…

If one finds Netflix, video games, partying, and vacations enjoyable; and they spend time pursuing those after becoming financially independent & retiring early, are they missing the big picture? I understand and agree with the bit about not slaving for someone else throughout your life, but I'm curious what you mean by the "big picture" otherwise?

> If one finds Netflix, video games, partying, and vacations enjoyable; and they spend time pursuing those after becoming financially independent & retiring early, are they missing the big picture?

Each of us has to define the scope of his life, I personally have a hard time imagining that a fully developed human being will be deeply satisfied by consuming media. In French these things are called "divertissement", which literally means "diversion". There are many other things to explore than mere consumption. It's kind of the junk food of life, it makes you feel good for a short while but not that good in the long run. I doubt anyone will remember binge watching breaking bad as a milestone of there life (Or remember it at all).

I'm not saying these things are intrinsically bad, we should just be careful about how much of our life we dedicate to them, especially when work already takes most of our time already. If your life is work>consumption>sleep and you feel like you're missing something your probably are.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#72

Post by Scarblac »

Zenst wrote: post #21

I used to do competitive swimming but it was training that allowed you to switch off and can't beat it. Alas public swimming pool's are a chaos of noise and actions and whilst some have swim lanes, your kinda relieving gridlock and just causes more stress than I can expel.

Our local public pool opens at 7:00 and the small group of people who are there every day at that time all come purely to do their laps for an hour.

Personally I can't stand chlorified water though...

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#73

Post by zizee »

alimw wrote: post #70
entee wrote: post #18

Just finished swimming a race from Alcatraz to shore, it's just the best high. I do tons of endurance sports, but swimming is the most reliable in yielding that euphoric feeling. I think it's due to it being essentially forced mindfulness meditation. Though you could swim with music, I don't and that means it's just my thoughts for 30-60 min (watch the thoughts, can't do anything about them right now). I'm forced to…

> That or maybe it's just the hypoxia ;) Or a kind of mild hypothermia? I've experienced your "euphoric feeling" during and after swims in cooler water. Google tells me the water temperature in San Francisco Bay is about fourteen degrees Celsius.

> Hypoxia is a condition in which the body or a region of the body is deprived of adequate oxygen supply at the tissue level.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoxia_(medical)

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#74

Post by throwaway2019G »

zizee wrote: post #73
alimw wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That or maybe it's just the hypoxia ;) Or a kind of mild hypothermia? I've experienced your "euphoric feeling" during and after swims in cooler water. Google tells me the water temperature in San Francisco Bay is about fourteen degrees Celsius.

> Hypoxia is a condition in which the body or a region of the body is deprived of adequate oxygen supply at the tissue level. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoxia_(medical)

Read the actual comment.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#75

Post by Inconel »

colechristensen wrote: post #58

I have been interested in swimming for a few years but never found the place to develop the skill to the point of not drowning. I could try to swim in my apartment's tiny shallow pool which is really better for children. I could spend $200/mo at a nearby health club. I could drive to the ocean and jump in. The first just isn't big enough or deep enough to get anything done. The second is ... well I want to go swimmin…

I'm going to preface this by mentioning that I swam competitively starting at around age 6 through high school, was both a life guard and swim instructor at UCSF's rec center during high school, tend to be an overly cautious person, have had to pull a lifeless body from the ocean before, and have witnessed too many near drownings to count.

With that out of the way, does anyone else think its a really bad idea to advise someone who in their own words is trying to develop their swimming skill to the "point of not drowning", to simply find some seemingly calm piece of open water and have at it? I think this is terrible advice. If you aren't comfortable in the water you shouldn't be going into any natural body of water unsupervised, no matter how calm it may appear.

I no longer live in the BA but you should be able to find a YMCA, community swimming pool, or your local community college, that will have adult swim classes for beginners at a very reasonable cost. A couple weeks of classes and you should be comfortable enough to where you most likely won't drown, keep in mind even excellent swimmers drown on occasion.

Once you have the basics down you can join a local Masters club if you want to get more serious. Please don't go practice at Ocean beach.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#76

Post by agumonkey »

Engineering-MD wrote: post #48
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Triathlons: Swimming is the sea Cycling is the air Running is the earth You learn to appreciate and respect them all. Swimming is birth: thrown into an unfamiliar environment, you struggle to find your way Cycling is youth/midlife: You have your footing, now you speed through life with ease Running is old age: slower than you were in your prime, you learn persistence as your body weakens.

I feel your analogy needs a fourth sport to complete the 4 elements. But what sport would be represented by fire? Perhaps competitive shooting (gunpowder=fire)

Martial Arts Kata comes to mind. Explosive.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#77

Post by kharak »

lm28469 wrote: post #71
namanyayg wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one finds Netflix, video games, partying, and vacations enjoyable; and they spend time pursuing those after becoming financially independent & retiring early, are they missing the big picture? I understand and agree with the bit about not slaving for someone else throughout your life, but I'm curious what you mean by the "big picture" otherwise?

> If one finds Netflix, video games, partying, and vacations enjoyable; and they spend time pursuing those after becoming financially independent & retiring early, are they missing the big picture? Each of us has to define the scope of his life, I personally have a hard time imagining that a fully developed human being will be deeply satisfied by consuming media. In French these things are called "divertissement", wh…

What else do you do every evening? For me, its working out, doing chores or Netflix, podcasts and video games. There is nothing else I could do. Too tired to learn new things and I need to recharge.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#78

Post by Pimpus »

entee wrote: post #18

Just finished swimming a race from Alcatraz to shore, it's just the best high. I do tons of endurance sports, but swimming is the most reliable in yielding that euphoric feeling. I think it's due to it being essentially forced mindfulness meditation. Though you could swim with music, I don't and that means it's just my thoughts for 30-60 min (watch the thoughts, can't do anything about them right now). I'm forced to…

You should look into aquatic ape theory, it might explain why we feel so good when we swim. One of the ideas is that swimming required us to develop breath control, which was a prerequisite for developing speech.

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#79

Post by plumeria »

tsbinz wrote: post #60
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the solution is to move the water and have the swimming equivalent of a treadmill. NB: this already actually exists, only remember seeing it in a video at some point though.

You probably saw it in person as well, it's called a river :) In Zurich there's multiple places where you can swim in the Limmat, and it takes quite some effort to stay in place - one example is https://images.app.goo.gl/qTASdR51yDTiCk299 (of course you could go without the installation but this allows people to use it that would be afraid of getting carried away ...)

Is there something like this in Berlin?

Re: What Swimming Taught Me About Happiness

#80

Post by entee »

nradov wrote: post #43
entee wrote: post #18

Just finished swimming a race from Alcatraz to shore, it's just the best high. I do tons of endurance sports, but swimming is the most reliable in yielding that euphoric feeling. I think it's due to it being essentially forced mindfulness meditation. Though you could swim with music, I don't and that means it's just my thoughts for 30-60 min (watch the thoughts, can't do anything about them right now). I'm forced to…

Congratulations on finishing the race! Have you seen the documentary "Kim Swims" about the first woman to swim from the Farallon Islands to San Francisco?

No but I'll look it up! That's a crazy, crazy swim.
Post reply on HN