Ten Foot Board

When I was a tween long ago in my small coastal town, we spent a good deal of our summer vacation at the local swimming pool. It wasn't inside something called an aquatic centre with hot pools, and nice showers and slides and waves and all sorts of amusing features. It was just a swimming pool of modest size with a diving board in the ell at one end. And it had no roof. It was tiled, however, an improvement over the many pools in those days whose walls were made of rough concrete and the water often unheated. I supposed there were substances like chlorine for protection, because in those times we remembered the terrible outbreak of polio before the vaccine was discovered. But since then everyone had lined up to get their shots. But this park pool was tiled and looked clean and welcoming. We spent hours at the pool doing our versions of various dives. We had no instructor but we watched those who did have training, and saw in movies what the dives looked like: the swan dive and the twists.  We winged it. You were not allowed to cannonball into the pool for fear of The Whistle blown by the lifeguard on duty. If you were guilty of breaking the rules, you might be prevented from coming into the pool enclosure. But like all kids, we wanted to try our luck on the ten foot board. It took courage because from that height, the plunge looked ominous. Most of us went up and tried, but had to come down our knees knocking and give some kind of plausible excuse to our pals. We had heard the dire descriptions of how much our heads would hurt if we dove incorrectly and smacked them on the water. But I will never forget the terror of standing at the end of that ten foot board and looking down at the turquoise water and hearing my friends calling encouragement while I quaked. Finally, I did it, but only once. And it did hurt. A lot. In these troubled times, with 2017 looming,  I feel just like I am standing on the edge of that ten foot board. The ten-footer of the world. This world, with all of its technological advancements, medical victories and our efforts to become generous and open minded and peaceful is looming at the brink of what could be something either drastically apocalyptic or dynamically humanitarian. It rests on the shoulders of all of the leaders in the world, the whole world. Not all leaders agree what the world should look like. The waters aren't all sparkling and clean and clear. There are those who hate and plot to destroy innocent people, and those who strive to keep the peace and protect the populace from harm. There are leaders who are controlled by forces that are for good and those that we deem bad because they kill and destroy. We put the leaders there to do what we feel is going to make our lives better; we send messages that seem often to fall on deaf ears. Those we trust to do good, seem to be few and much belaboured. It is a scary time standing on this world ten foot board and there is no lifeguard. Then again, there's no one else but one at the end of that board. It's up to us.