6/3/2006 - Why?
What do you say when people ask you “Why do you dive?” or “What’s diving like?” Saying things like “it’s amazing!” or “because I absolutely love it!” just doesn’t cut it as an explanatin – for either my own personal satisfaction or for the person asking the question.
More often than not, if I’ve given them an answer like “Because I love it” or “It’s absolutely amazing” they reply, “Yes, but why?!”
So why? What is it about diving that makes it so addictive? What is it about piling on so much cumbersome gear and weight and awkward equipment that makes you keep doing it again and again. Why do I continually throw myself into bloody freezing water time after time after time, finding myself looking forward to getting cold and tired and salt encrusted.
How do you put into words, what Scuba diving means to you. Why it continues to hold you in it’s grip?
I was fortunate enough to attend a diving conference a while ago where the idea of ‘marketing diving’ was raised. Basically, in order for an industry and a sport to continue growing it needs a continual input of new participants. In our case, new divers. How can we sell diving as a sport so that people choose it over and above other potential activities and hobbies? Effectively, the conclusion was that we have to sell the experience of diving to people.
I find myself wondering how exactly it’s possible to sell that experience fully, when I (verbose as I am) find it difficult enough to explain to my non-diving friends what diving means to me, and why I adore it as much as I do. You can show people photos of beautiful, bright things. Pictures of couples diving together in the tropics, holding hands in crystal blue water while the fishlife swims lazily past them. Or the darker, murkier temperate waters brimming with wrecks and caves and adventure. Or the idea of exploring different things.
And yet, even with these stereotypical, somewhat cliched diving marketing ideas, I find myself completely dissatisfied with that portrayal of diving.
What sold you on diving? Why did you decide to do your OW course and start blowing bubbles. My story I’ve told you all already, I think. My parents ran a huge dive resort when I was little, and my childhood consisted of me playing in the bottom of the pool with the scuba gear at the end of the day with the left over air in the tanks. Following it through to getting my certification took a while longer than it should have, but it was a natural extension of my love of being underwater and the certain knowledge that one day, I would dive. There was never, in my mind, the thought that I wouldn’t.
If I look at my growing up environment a little more closely though, maybe it was the atmosphere around the divers that convinced me I wanted to be one of them when I grew up. Divers have fun. They’re real people who love life and living.
Is diving just about that time you’re underwater? Or is it more than that?
To some people I guess it’s only about being underwater. About the fish or the wrecks or something underwater that just grabs them and drags them in to a life of discovery. And yet, you can’t dive and not be sucked into the associated social activities of diving. Diving with other people – PADI has the dreaded “Meet people, Go Places, Do Things” commercial view of diving, and yet, it’s based on a very valid truth.
This all comes back to the original questions – WHY do you dive and what is diving like?
Ultimately I guess each person can only answer that for themselves because diving is a very individual and personal experience a lot of the time. What one person gets out of diving is not necessarily what another person gets. Of the priorities and important components of a dive of one person differ considerably to another person’s opinion of what makes a dive good and why they’d do it again.
I honestly don’t know exactly what it is about diving that keeps me coming back. I can’t pinpoint what it is that has me gripped so tightly it’s something I never, ever want to stop doing.
When I first started, years after my parents started in another industry away from the diving, it was about the diving. It was about being underwater. That’s a feeling you can’t describe, or explain why it addicts you so much, but it does. A natural extension an intrinsic love of water.
Then it became about exploring another world. Seeing things that were absolutely remarkable. And again, that absolute awe when I considered the fact that I was however deep underwater, effectively ‘weightless’ and blowing bubbles and swimming with fish. It’s amazing how much of a turn on just thinking about things can be, isn’t it?!
And slowly I’ve stopped judging how good a dive was based on vis and critters and excitement, and focus more now on overall experience. I truly believe every dive is a good dive, however the people you dive with and things you do before/after diving have a lot of importance to how much you enjoy yourself.
Don’t get me wrong, I still think things like vis and the site itself are important, but they are not the be-all end-all.
I still haven’t managed to answer the question – why do I dive and what’s it like.
I keep rambling and waffling and thinking, but for some reason my brain keeps taking detours and avoiding the real meat of my question.
Why do I dive? Because I love it. Why? How do I put that into words?
People are divided into two broad categories – divers, who understand it when I say “it’s amazing” because they know exactly what I mean even though those words as so woefully inadequate, and non-divers who just look at me and go “why is it amazing?”
If any of you can put down in words what it is that makes diving so amazing, or offer some insight and suggestions, I would definitely love to hear from you. I can think of a million little things that just add together which give disjointed illustrations of why I love it, but I cannot for the life of me explain what it is about diving that makes it so unbelievably amazing.
What’s it like?
Why don’t you try it with me, and find out, because as cliched as it sounds, there’s no way I can tell you what diving is really like.
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