Sas
Contributor
Myself.
How good do you need to be?
- Thread starter Diver0001
- Start date
Please register or login
Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.
Benefits of registering include
- Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
- A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
- You can make this box go away
Depends on the dive. If I am taking a class, sure I am trying to please my instructor and his agency. Why take the class if you are not going to put forth the effort? In fact the harder the instructor is to please the harder you will try and the more you will push yourself and the more you will learn.
Other than that the only ones you should be trying to please with your diving are those that you love. If you are the only one you love than just do it for yourself. I have others however that I love so I strive to be a better diver for them. So I can come back to them and if by chance they are divers I strive to be a better diver so that I can set a good example to them.
DaleC
Contributor
Ernest Shackleton
Whenever I do something I think to myself "would Ernest Shackleton approve of this?" If the answer is yes I'm good to go.
It is interesting. On the one hand it's every man/woman for themselves and on the other the current state of the "buddy" system sucks... perhaps there is a correlation?
It's probably why 50% of marriages end in divorce too.
I try to please most people if it doesn't put me out too much or cause me to violate some inner conviction. Why not? I've even been known to bring homemade cookies to share during the SI. Mr Shackleton would approve.
Sas
Contributor
Why does the "buddy" system suck? As far as I see it, some buddies suck, not the system as a whole. When I dive with buddies I have two awesome regular buddies that I can rely on 99% of the time. Obviously I am the first person I would turn to with a problem but I am very confident in a few regular buddies' abilities to help me if the s*** hits the fan - i.e. for some reason I screw up or suffer a medical problem.
If buddies dive as buddies should - i.e. make a plan and stick to it, then there is no reason for the buddy system to suck.
Mr. Nudi
Guest
I try to please my girlfriend and my instructor. For my girlfriend, it's for the comfort of knowing that we both have the skills to be able to be 100% safe in the water and that she feels comfortable as well. We both were introduced to diving together and we love it. I make a point to learn more each time I chit-chat with our instructor so I can take what I have learned and apply it our diving. The more I know the safer we are together.
Also for my instructor, my gf and I have formed a good friendship with him, both in the water and out of the water. I really take it to heart that I can show him that his instruction was worth while, and we can show him that what he taught us did not just go in one ear and out the other. THe passion that we have for diving and his passion for teaching us is priceless.
Also for my instructor, my gf and I have formed a good friendship with him, both in the water and out of the water. I really take it to heart that I can show him that his instruction was worth while, and we can show him that what he taught us did not just go in one ear and out the other. THe passion that we have for diving and his passion for teaching us is priceless.
1) Myself, because Im the only one who has no other choice than to dive with me if Im to dive at all.
2) I will let you know when I find out, I have begun to suspect that something close to perfection is the least that will be acceptable, what a demanding sob...
- Messages
- 22,171
- Reaction score
- 2,790
- # of dives
- 5000 - ∞
Myself, through the appreciation expressed by the respect of my peers and the confidence of my superiors.
Programmatic planning that optimizes maximum scientific productively with minimum risk and minimum cost.
Myself.
I read your other post regarding who owns the sport and now this one regarding who are we trying to please. To me it would be more interesting if you just posted what it is you are bothered by and why.
I'm guessing that you are tired of reading posts on the internet from divers with whom you disagree and maybe find irritating, overbearing, arrogant, feel free to stop me...
Why not just post something to that effect and let anyone who wants to post their comments. Your assumption seems to be that anyone with which you disagree is trying to please someone else. I think anyone who dives for pleasure is diving because it pleases them to do so. If some people make choices that you disagree with why is that so hard to understand and why does that mean they are trying to please someone else?
I think we all do things that please us whether it's diving or anything else.
I read your other post regarding who owns the sport and now this one regarding who are we trying to please. To me it would be more interesting if you just posted what it is you are bothered by and why.
I'm guessing that you are tired of reading posts on the internet from divers with whom you disagree and maybe find irritating, overbearing, arrogant, feel free to stop me...
Why not just post something to that effect and let anyone who wants to post their comments. Your assumption seems to be that anyone with which you disagree is trying to please someone else. I think anyone who dives for pleasure is diving because it pleases them to do so. If some people make choices that you disagree with why is that so hard to understand and why does that mean they are trying to please someone else?
I think we all do things that please us whether it's diving or anything else.
Hopefully, Rob will explain the unusual formulation of his question, but it seems intended to lead people toward examining their motivations for choosing their personal diving standards.
I assume it was intended to lead people away from simply re-hashing the old dogmas and ad hominem attacks.
Since I'm a lousy mind-reader, I just decided to answer it introspectively and constructively, as I think Rob intended....
Dave C
I read your other post regarding who owns the sport and now this one regarding who are we trying to please. To me it would be more interesting if you just posted what it is you are bothered by and why.
I'm guessing that you are tired of reading posts on the internet from divers with whom you disagree and maybe find irritating, overbearing, arrogant, feel free to stop me...
I wanted to wait until the discussion was going to jump in and really give my opinion. I'll address both of those posts here and assume anyone really interested in what I have to say will find it.
You're right about one thing. The two issues are, in my mind, closely related.
What you guessed about my motivations isn't right on, though. What I intended to do with both of these posts was to turn some assumptions upside down and make us look at them slightly differently. (like looking at a photograph upside down gives you a new way to study it, even though the object itself is identical).
So what am I after here? To challenge people, some of whom clearly do not need it -- even to the extent of not understanding why I'm asking the question -- to some who were quite frank and open in their responses.
When I asked:
1) who are you trying to please, and why?
2) what will it take to please them?
Two answers really exemplify the point I was trying to push.
The first was Lynne's answer, when she said that she's always (not only with diving) battling a severe internal critic built on her stuggles with perfectionism.
The second was Marci's post, and several like it, that indicate an internal "picture" of what a good diver is.....
Those are good observations because I think that most of us, myself included, *try* to live up to some kind of internal picture of what it means to be a good diver. But let me park this for a second and make a comparison.
I play the piano....far from brilliantly, I'm afraid. But when I think about "good" piano players or people I would like to be like, I think of names like Glenn Gould who, like me, liked Bach. I, being the way I am, actually somehow compare myself to Glenn Gould because I would very VERY much like to be able to play Bach (or for that matter, anything) like he did. This internal "picture", however, isn't very fair to me. There is no way that I can ever achieve this level of proficiency and I know it.... but the picture remains ....
It's like this for divers too. Marci thought of her own "hero" image, which if it's realistic can be quite helpful. Lynne let's her "picture" be defined by her father's perfectionism. Other divers have other "hero" stereotypes that they carry with them, conciously or unconsciously.
I believe, for better or worse, that trying to constantly "live up" to a hero image isn't always helpful. It's not helpful for our progress, it's not helpful for our satisfaction, it can kill the "fun", create stress or even a sort of "performance anxiety" when diving with others, etc etc.
So I wanted to turn the picture upside down and ask people to look at it's form instead of it's content.
The real question behind the question I asked was, of course, "is your hero image making you a better diver". Of course, I couldn't come right out and just ask that because nobody would have understood it. I tried to simplfy my thinking into thread form but I guess from the reactions that it still came of cryptically... oh well....
Which brings me to the second thread. I actually started that thread first but I was working backwards through my thoughts.
What is even worse than having your own "hero" image?
.
.
.
Letting someone else give you one. And that's where the elite come in. In every field there are the elite who all have *their* own hero image (and God forbid they're often as severe as Lynne's internal one.....) and would like us to believe
a) it's the only one
b) it's the right one.
The challenge in that thread was therefore to dismantle this by rejecting it and trying to make people somehow consciously aware that they have a choice to believe it or not. To accept it or not. To give up their own choices or not.
I really don't know what's worse, our own internal Hero's or the ones the diving elite have defined for us. In some cases maybe one and in some cases maybe the other. That's the reason for two threads about it.
One final thought. What's worse for me, personally? The elitist image. My own internal diving "hero" isn't nearly as hard to please as the elistist one(s). That's probably why it shows through in these two threads that the elitists "get under my skin" as Lynne put it. Maybe they do but not so much because I can't ignore the message but because I think the message is inappropriate.
I don't know if anyone will get anything out of that but with a little luck it will jump start some discussion and maybe some critical thinking.
R..
Similar threads
