When I was eight, I took up swimming lessons. Plunging myself into the blue, rippling water every Saturday in the summer for the next three years, I learned the correct knee positions in the elementary back stroke and the precise arm movements for the front crawl. At that age, swimming lessons were a chore, something that I didn’t want to waste my precious Saturday mornings on….and I made it very clear to my swim instructor. I thought that maybe by being stubborn I just might get out of going to lessons. It soon became routine: getting up early, sitting in the car while my parents drove me to yet another lesson, and standing in the freezing cold pool trying to do ‘red-light-green-light’ and ‘underwater bobs’. However, after a while I learned to love swimming. And what better way to continue with it than become a swim instructor? At least this is how I thought my grand narrative wanted me to proceed.
So at the age of fifteen I went through the classes and the certification process, and ended up back where I had started…Saturday morning swimming lessons. I donned my black swimsuit and jumped into the pool in order to teach other eight year olds the joys of swimming. Yet, I soon noticed that every class I taught had at least one ‘stubborn’ child. One who couldn’t…didn’t want to participate in ‘soldier, monkey, tree’ or do the scissors kick. These kids reminded me of myself…and I made it my goal to get them just as involved as the rest. Even though I wasn’t successful every time, I am happy that I tried to help.
Long story short, I am who I am today because of not just swimming, but also teaching it. My history led me to act and think the way I do now. Even though according to Hegel, history is only ‘important’ if it is of World-Historical individuals (great men), I feel my history is still important to me, and it is not done yet. It’s still going somewhere; it still needs to find its ideal structure. And now that I think about it, some people may think that my history may never have a telos…but to me it already will.
I love how you found your passion of swimming by being forced to go every saturday even though you didn't want too. Many people find their passion that way, as well as I when it came to chemistry and high school. Where you're forced to go everyday. However they are different subjects and different experiences. I can't help but wonder if truly deep inside, you wanted to get the stubborn kids involved because maybe you wanted to show them something you didn't yet realize at that age and wanted them to see it differently for them and maybe yourself as a child. Just a thought, but maybe it;s just me showing my fondness of personal reflections.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a very good story since most kids hate doing things on the weekend when they could be sleeping then spending all day with their friends. I was also this child who thought I could get out of stuff if I put up a fight, but ended up loving most of the sports I played. I also think that you were right in bringing up that even though there were no "World-Historical individuals" in your story of learning to love to swim, but it still means something and makes up the history of who you are today.
ReplyDeleteI think it is very interesting how you hated going to classes but in the end loved it, and enough so that you even began teaching it. I think it's funny how in a lot of situations in life people end up going around full circle and this is just one example of this. Also I think that it is very important how parents sometimes have to force children into activities that they don't necessarily love in the moment, because as long as parents keep pushing their children, eventually they will learn to appreciate these things.
ReplyDelete