Life lands you at the deep end

Question

We were discussing the meaning of a sentence in Spanish in the corresponding sister site but it results that it was an automatic translation of an English one taken from Quora

For me, Europe is the safest bet to find a life that will not land you at the deep end, while also offering a dazzling variety of opportunities and experiences.

I can't offer a good Spanish translation for the highlighted part because I don't fully understand it.

I've been checking the different meanings of the verb to land but none seems to fit for me. I think that probably it's this one

land verb (HIT)
[ I or T ] If someone lands a blow or it lands, they hit another person

So it would be something like

your life will not land you at the deep end of your life
your life will not hit you hard at the deep end of your life

There is a sort of strange recursion there. How can your own life land you? I think that I'm missing something here so ... what's the meaning of that sentence? Is it using an idiom that I can't find?

Answer 1

It's just bad English. You can't "land" in the deep end of swimming pool.

This is a mixed metaphor. "At the deep end" is where things are difficult, and it is normally used to mean "attempting difficult things without practicing easier ones" It's not the right metaphor. It's just "wrong".

You can unmix the metaphor by saying "...find a life that won't drop me in the deep end". "throw me in the deep end" is also possible. In either case "life" is metaphorically a person who can drop or throw - imagine "life" is a swimming teacher who drops a child in the deep end of the pool to force them to learn to swim.

Answer 2

This one is similar to what the OP described:

throw [somebody] in at the deep end

to make someone start a new and difficult job or activity without helping them or preparing them for it

Cambridge Dictionary

Applying that to the OP's example, we could say

For me, Europe is the safest bet to find a life, and a person will likely get help there.

Answer 3

I think this applies to British English as well, but I'm certain that it applies to American English: to land means to follow a course of action that will lead to trouble or some kind of predicament.

Doing that stunt on your bike will land you in the emergency room.

Using AI to write your term paper will land you in hot water.

As to the usage in the question:

Europe is the safest bet to find a life that will not land you at the deep end.

First, "the deep end (of the pool)" is a figure of speech for being in a predicament, for being "in over your head".

The intended meaning of the statement about Europe is, I believe, that you should look to Europe as a place to settle because your doing so is not likely to land you in the deep end: you won't find yourself in over your head. But "Europe is the safest bet to find a life" is weirdly phrased, rather elliptical, since the seeker of the life is not explicitly mentioned, though "bet" implicitly alludes to someone who is taking a chance by choosing Europe. And a life is an elliptical subject for the verb "land you", but we can understand "a life" as a course of action:

If you're seeking a new life for yourself and are risk-averse, Europe is the safest bet.

Answer 4

The closest definition in the Cambridge dictionary is:

arrive: to (cause to) arrive on the ground or other surface after moving down through the air

The definition quoted above is a very literal interpretation of the meaning. It can also be used in a metaphorical sense, meaning arrive in a situation. One particular set phrase that uses this metaphorical meaning is "[doing ...] will land you in trouble".

It is possible to describe being in trouble as "being in deep water", so "[doing ...] will land you in deep water" sounds like a contradiction, but actually makes (metaphorical) sense.

There is another set phrase, "going in at the deep end", meaning to skip the preliminaries and get straight in to the difficult stuff.

The sentence that you quoted is a mish-mash of these different set phrases: putting it all together, you get something that has almost... almost... lost the thread of the original meaning.