The water hasn't changed. We have.

Everyone who grew up near water knows the same scene. The whole street heading down to the waterside, clothes in a heap, and straight in. Nobody watching, nobody who needed to watch. It went fine, because it always went fine.

I love hearing that story, and I believe it too. But I draw a different lesson from it than most people do. Because nostalgia isn't history: our memory mostly keeps the summer days when everyone came home safe — not the accidents that happened back then as well. So that lovely picture was only half true. And the water of back then is exactly the water of today. Just as cold, just as still, just as bottomless. Nothing changed there. What did change is everything around it. The question isn't whether we can go back to that summer, but whether we still dare to look honestly at today.

We can do less than we think

Swimming used to be something you simply could do, because you grew up with it — not from a course, but from being in the water a thousand times. You felt the moment the bottom dropped away beneath your feet; you knew how cold water knocks the breath from your lungs, that jolt of shock right after the jump. That kind of knowledge doesn't live in your head, it lives in your body.

And that body is what we're losing. Not because we've grown dumber, but because everyday life has drifted away from the water. We swim indoors, in a heated pool with a line on the bottom and someone keeping an eye out. Wonderful for learning to swim. But it's something entirely different from a cold pond with a soft, muddy bottom and a current you never see coming. A certificate says you swim your lengths neatly; it says nothing about the wild water out there. And that's exactly where our instincts fail us — the awareness that a mirror-flat pond can be just as deadly as a rough sea. That instinct is built only at the water itself, and fewer and fewer people ever get there.

A warning you can't read warns no one

Picture something anyone who's ever stood by water far from home will recognise. A little sign at the edge, in a language you don't speak. You can see there's something written there, you sense it's a warning. But *what* it says — where it gets deep, where the current pulls, where things have already gone wrong — that never lands.

And so, everywhere, there's water that people pass by who don't know the language of that sign. Travellers, newcomers, people who never learned to swim because life never gave them the chance. We've convinced ourselves we've warned them, because there's a picture hanging somewhere. But a warning is only a warning once it lands. And this is no reproach to those who can't read it or can't swim — nobody chooses that. The problem isn't the person at the water's edge, but our idea that one little sign is enough.

The age of "I want to, so I will"

Something else has changed too, something no sign can stand up to, but which anyone standing by the water will recognise. We've become people for whom a warning isn't the end of a conversation, but the start of a debate. Tell someone it's dangerous, and the odds are good you'll hear that they'll judge that for themselves, thanks. I want to, so I'm allowed to. Vigilance has become negotiable, and good advice something people talk their way around.

I'm not saying everything was better in the old days. What I am saying is this: water doesn't negotiate back. It makes no sound when things go wrong. Someone who's drowning doesn't shout, doesn't thrash wildly — they slip under in silence, often within arm's reach of people who never notice a thing. It's patient. And then, all at once, it's too late.

How long will we keep looking away

All over the world we know these places. Water where you really shouldn't swim, and where every warm day people are drawn anyway. We know it, and we look the other way — until something goes wrong, and we ask out loud how it could ever have come to this, when deep down we already knew.

That's where it grates, and it's an honest struggle. On one side stands freedom: the right to choose for yourself, to go into the water the way people always have. On the other side stands something simple: looking out for one another, especially for those who can't read the danger or can't swim. More eyes at the waterside help — but where's the line? When is watching out care, and when is it nannying? And how much looking away can we allow ourselves before we're no longer entitled to call it bad luck?

The question we can no longer dodge

I'm deliberately not taking sides here, and that's not weakness. The conversation stalls the moment someone rushes to declare who's right. Maybe the answer isn't freedom *or* caution, but both at once. And maybe it starts simply with admitting out loud that "it'll be fine" isn't a conviction — it's a gamble.

So I'll put the question to you. Do we leave people free, or do we look out for one another? Do we trust that it'll turn out fine, or do we stop someone who can't see the danger coming? That's a conversation we need to have now, while it's calm at the waterside — not on the day the water has already given us the answer.

*What do you think — do we leave people to their own choices, or do we watch out for one another more strictly? This is exactly the conversation we've put off for far too long.*

About the author

Swim-school owner · chair of NSWZ · founder of De WaterExpert and WaterZeker · thirty years of swimming lessons, fourteen summers as a lifeguard.