Recently, I have been preparing for the upcoming swimming competition in the school sports meet. I have been training very hard. In fact, I started learning swimming since I was young. If I count, I started learning swimming in around third grade. Until now, although I haven't been swimming all the time, during my school years, I used to go to the swimming pool every summer vacation. If we talk about my swimming experience, I can proudly say that I have been swimming for more than 10 years without blushing.
When I first learned how to swim, I was very excited. I wanted to be in the water all the time. But as I swam more, I became more experienced and lost the excitement of a beginner. The title I came up with while swimming reflects my thoughts during that time. When I immerse myself in the water, my mind becomes very divergent and I start thinking about random things. I really enjoy this feeling of floating consciousness. It reminds me of a book by Haruki Murakami called "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running". If I were to write something, I would name it "What I Think About When I Swim".
Swimming is very different from other sports on land. People who are used to standing on two legs on land have to get used to floating in the water without any support. It takes time to practice, just like learning to walk when we were children. Swimming is a solitary sport. A basketball team has 5 starters and 7 or 10 substitutes. In soccer, you have 11 teammates playing together. In tennis, you at least have an opponent to play against. But in swimming, you only have yourself swimming back and forth in the lane.
It is precisely because of the solitude of swimming that I fell in love with this sport. Moreover, when swimming, all you need is a non-bulky swimsuit, and you can expose as much skin as possible, as if returning to the womb, free to come and go. When swimming, you can just go without having to make plans with companions and set a specific time. Otherwise, you always feel lonely and strange in ball sports.
When I swim, I think about:
- Finally, I can say goodbye to all electronic devices for a while. Even if someone sends me a message, my phone can only be left in the locked locker. And when I open my phone two hours later, those who were looking for me may have already solved their problems.
- The swimming pool is the quietest place. When you start swimming, you can only hear the sound of splashing water at the moment you come out of the water, and the voices of people outside seem like signals from another world.
- When swimming, I focus wholeheartedly on my body. When I swim, I only care about whether my legs are kicking forcefully enough, whether my core is tightened, whether my hands and feet are coordinating. When I look at the bottom of the pool, I only care about whether I am making progress.
- When I swim, although the energy in my body is being consumed, the pool is like a warm bed, recharging my tired soul. The time spent in the pool has transformed into the strength to face the complexities of the outside world.
Swimming back and forth in the lane, constantly accelerating, getting tired and gasping for breath, until I can no longer swim, I sink to the bottom of the pool. No breathing, no thinking, everything is left behind. It feels so good.