Trimtabs for change
For nearly 35 years, I had gone to the pool and swum at least 3.5 km three times a week, rarely missing a session. Recently, I replaced my swimming with surfing.
I love swimming. I love the water. I love the sport. I now love surfing, which presents a host of challenges I did not anticipate.
Love makes it easy to get up week after week, year after year…decade after decade. I love the way swimming and surfing make me feel, the shape it gives my body, and the challenge of constantly reaching for perfection.
Swimming is a very technical individual sport. Once you have the basics of the stroke (and there are four to learn), the rest is about micro-mastery. The aim is to learn how to move through the water with greater ease and speed.
It is the pursuit of this that keeps me coming back. And the feeling of hitting the sweet spot, where you move as one with the water.
Micro-mastery and micro-change fascinate me. One very small change changes everything.
In the case of swimming, micro-mastery and micro-change are about becoming more connected with the water.
So often, we focus on major change. Yet so usually it is the micro-change, the trim-tab, that initiates the most profound changes of all. History is littered with sparks igniting a field primed for change.
The work of Polly Higgins and her intent to bring in the law of ecocide into international law is an example of this.
Tarek al-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi is another…in his act of literally flaming himself to death, the Arab Spring unfolded. This particular story is only in the very early chapters of unfolding.
Rosa Parks, another.
The city of Curitiba, Brazil, and its choice to implement a complementary currency…bus tokens for sorted garbage collection…back in the late 70s, and the effects this created…another.
Our addiction to big, bold, shiny, expensive things limits the creativity of possibilities.
Our major systems in Universe need to change. But are we looking in the right places? Are we seduced by the big, expensive…the “I need to raise money for this” changes…when right under our noses, the micro-change is possible?
Written April 15th 2015, I added the reference to surfing today.
Photo Taken August 18th 2025, Article published August 19th 2025
