Take Off Your Clothes

This is not the title of my sizzling new romance novel that is rapidly heading up the best sellers list, nor is it an instruction that I ever want to hear from an airport security screener.

It’s a title that is as provocative as it is essential and it’s meaning has nothing to do with it’s perception. Let me strip your thoughts for a moment as I elucidate the concept further.

Last week I accompanied my friend at the community swimming pool. He swims laps for conditioning and he is more motivated when someone actually watches him. Knowing that I am a people enthusiast, I was a shoo-in to eyeball his strenuous activities.

Since I am not a swimmer myself, I am usually peripatetic along the side the pool while he swims. Although, I recently discovered that while I speak to him as he swims, he can’t hear a word that I say. Imagine all those conversations that have gone to waste because he couldn’t hear?

I’m talking deep truths, like if Britney Spears will ever have her privacy again or if Paris Hilton will win the Nobel Peace Prize?

The swimming pool is a social gathering for people. They lay around the pool in assorted swimming gear in assuming positions. Those who lay around never touch the water. They lay on their backs or on their stomachs, worshipping the almighty sun god.

If an outsider were to observe this scene, they would see a sea of half naked bodies resembling a scene in Dante’s Inferno. A hedonistic ritual heated by a desire to fulfill superficial ideals of beauty and resigned to the machinations of fooling the eye into distraction.

At poolside, everyone is beautiful. All shapes and sizes are accepted, yet fully clothed they are not. Wearing clothes comes with a price tag and a side of self-loathing.

There is no pretense around the pool. No hidden agendas. No anger. Everyone is free to be who they are. Some people travel to the pool in their bathrobes. When they step into the water, they become one with the water; almost in a meditative sense. They leave all of their worries behind - with their clothes.

The pool has a hotel feel. People are happy, friendly, free. They are on vacation from their troubles, jobs, lives. I began to think about why those same people are friendly by the pool, but when I see them fully dressed going about their business, they seem to be disconsolate. Perhaps their clothes imprison their spirits.

As I was contemplating this, my friend was busy talking to me, but I didn’t hear a word he said. Now he knew how I felt after all those times when I spoke to him. When he finally got my attention, I thought to myself, I couldn’t help but to think, “Karma.” It couldn’t have been more perfect; but then again karma is always perfect, that’s why it’s karma.

As I watched people pack up their sunblock, towels, sunglasses, iPods, BlackBerrys, iPhones, robes, clothing, newspapers and magazines, while others emerged from the water, I knew that there was something more to this concept.

Taking off your clothes doesn’t mean stripping. It’s taking off your inner garments and letting your Soul show. It’s being fully conscious of where you are, what you do and how you do it. It’s being in touch with the real you and not having to swim for it.