Swim through life

I do not remember when last time I attended a class where I really wanted to learn. For the first time I am getting the learning pleasure. The pleasure of competing with self and winning or sometimes failing. My fellow classmates are mostly between the age range of 4-14. So I am more than uncle to most of my fellow classmates. They are learning fast and looking at me with surprise when they see I am struggling with water and splashing unnecessary amount of water onto their face. They are at a very honest age so they give me expressions enough to make me feel bad about my inabilities. But I stay undeterred because I know I don’t know and I know with my efforts I can learn. I wish if I could have thought the same way when I was in all other past competitions.

Sometime age gives a wrong understanding about your knowledge. People think if you are elder to them you must know more that them. When you prove them wrong by honestly admitting that the particular skill they were evaluating you on, you do not have that. They immediately generalize that assuming you do not know many other things. But it is worth staying in that state than in a state where people assume you know a lot of things but actually you don’t. Respect should be always tied to the knowledge, experience and skills not your state in the society. If you tried to claim respect due to your state in the society then good luck for the struggle and failure.

Swimming is easy. It’s as easy as cycling, walking or meditating. Till you train your body as well as mind all these activities are as difficult as “impossible”. With practice you train your body and one fine day you will find that it is as easy as “possible”. Training our body and mind is a difficult task. Because we usually misunderstand or underestimate their powers. They can do a lot more than you can ever think of. Ask a 11 months old how difficult walking is, you will get the answer.  I see my fellow classmates who are in primary or pre-primary school are finding it easy to learn. They took very little time to train their body as well as mind. From this I understand, I have to spend more time un-training my body and mind then start training them. So un-training is what is taking extra time here.

Fear is what playing a major role. I am going smooth till the middle of the pool then I am thinking as if I am in the deepest section of the pool, I am trying to look outside to locate myself in the pool. During this process I am losing my balance and body needs extra efforts to bring itself back in balance. So I drain most of my energy there and fail to complete the stretch. So mind needs more training here. Fear in life is a great garbage collector. It is meant to collect the garbage of overconfidence but if we do not utilize our confidence and positive energy properly then fear takes that as well.

Another biggest lesson from swimming is to remain relaxed. Extra-efforts are the culprits for the failure. If we do not know the limit or knowingly cross the limit you have to face the music. So we must always know how much effort we must put. Nothing less or more.

Whether I become one swimmer or not but I am sure after these lessons I will learn how to live better.

PS: This summer vacation, me, my wife and both my kids joined swimming classes. It is a morning 7-9 class at Navrachana International School. Some 10 Kilometers away from my home.

Namaste!!!

– Stray Dog