“All right, you can come out to practice starting tomorrow, but you’d better work on your forms.” On one Monday night of high school freshman year, the most memorable and proud event of my life happened when I got into my high school water polo team.
I fought with my dad to go practice swimming at YMCA. Actually, it was more like I tried to ignore his effort to dissuade me from swimming as a sick person. I went anyways, and my dad took me with his car in the end since he knew that I would have even walked to YMCA if I was determined.
I knew that he was concerned with my sickness and that he didn’t want my cold to get any worse. And as expected, my cold got worse and I skipped school for the next two days. Regardless of anything however, swimming became a must in my daily schedule ever since I experienced my ineligibility to join my high school swim team. I would swim every day, again, regardless of anything, and try out for the team every season.
Unlike those fairytales and movies, my story of swimming did not have a happy ending. I could never join the team when I gave up trying out after my third attempt in sophomore year. I was disappointed in my short limit, but weirdly enough, I never turned away from swimming.
What was it? What made me never stop swimming after those numerous failures? I think it was something more than just the greedy nature of humans that awakens when people can’t have things that they strongly yearn. I just couldn’t stop swimming, or it felt like I was going to lose a huge part of me if I stopped swimming.
I still swim today, in a college club swimming. Swimming has not only become the center of my high school memories, but also helped me grow and learn who I really am. From the four years of swimming with lots of failures and downs, I grew up to be perseverant and that built who I am right now.
Why do you do what you do? I keep swimming in order to remind myself to never give into hardships and disappointments.
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