Failure must sometimes be an option

I know it's a strange thing to say. How could failure ever be a good thing? I will explain. Last weekend I was in Terrell, TX to go scuba diving.

I love scuba diving. I once swam with stingrays in The Living Seas at Walt Disney World. I was actually part of the attraction! I dove into the aquarium and slowly went to the bottom to prepare for our tour dive. After the tour we were allowed to do whatever we wanted, and being the showman that I am, I went straight for the glass to see my family and show them what I can do. I waved of course, but then I started to do some moves I learned during my buoyancy training. I did the superman, I hovered like a Buddhist during Nirvana, and then I flipped upside down and just stayed there. Looking at the world upside down gives you a new perspective on the world. Something almost seems so right with the world when everything has been turned upside down. After looking at the oohs and ahhs of the tourists, I decided to get close to the local wildlife. I found sharks, a huge sea turtle, a grouper the size of a Volvo rabbit, and then I met the stingrays. They are the most graceful animal of the ocean. They don't merely swim through the ocean, they cut through it. It moves out of their way. It ripples across the bottom of their body as if the ocean was created to hold them up. If you could have only seen it the way I had, you would have fallen in love too. If I did believe in reincarnation, that is the animal I would choose to come back as.

I digress back to Terrell, TX. When I went last week, I was to learn how to dive with a dry suit, deep dive, do some underwater navigation, and improve my buoyancy. As I began the dive, I was fine until I came back up. I went to dive again and I could not breathe. It was like my mouth became too small to hold the regulator properly, and my lungs could not get enough air. I was beginning to freak out, and that is the worst thing possible. I came back to the surface and decided to end my dive for the moment. I was pissed because it had never happened to me before. As I laid waiting on the surface for my mates to finish their dive, I began to cough violently and phlegm began to emerge. I realized the problem. The phlegm was blocking my airways. Before I dove I was fine, but as the water pressure squeezed me, my passages became blocked. If I continued to dive that way I might have died, so I decided that it was time to end my dive for good until I was healthier. I hated to drive away that day, but I cant dive anymore if I'm dead. It was truly a hard decision to make, but it's not one that I regret. Sometimes, failure is the best option.