So much bigger than the gold

I’ve battled with the idea of talking about my swimming career on this blog for a long time now, thinking of the pros and cons of sharing; for myself, and for others. To tackle this fear, I’ve done a lot of thinking, reading, talking and most importantly listening to those in my life whom I look up to, and to those who have accomplished things I hope to accomplish one day (in the water & out). By doing this, I’ve noticed one reoccurring theme-we ALL struggle.

This is something that has helped me a lot lately- realizing, understanding and absorbing the struggles of everyday life-because that’s all it is-LIFE. Have you ever heard the saying “don’t make a mountain out of a mole hill?” Well that was me, pretty much all the time, about everything! Yes, I’ll admit it, I was that person who made everything a ‘thing’. I didn’t realize it when I did it, (no one ever does), but I was much more negatively minded that positively. Don’t get me wrong…this blog post is not going to be about how to make all your thoughts positive (because I am still of the belief that that is humanely impossible~but I’ve been proven wrong before), but rather about ‘absorbing’ the struggles and not reacting to them.

One thing I want to note is that struggle is a form of being that we should all start to become more comfortable with. I know this may be hard to come to grips with, because every inch of our man made environment tries to convince us otherwise (diet pills, plastic surgery, the ‘shake’ weight, “How to lose weight without exercising or eating healthier” (I’m pretty sure that someone is going write a book with that title soon) but that is not life-that is commercial TV advertising, and it stops there. Life is a struggle, day in and day out, it’s not easy and it never becomes ‘just right’. This is what I’ve had to learn through my swimming.

I’ve had numerous moments when I wanted to quit swimming (I know-shocking right? LOL), luckily for me, I’ve never allowed myself to get to that point because there was always something inside, holding me back, something telling me that I wasn’t finished just yet. I kept on. I wanted to quit again. I kept going. And again-and I kept going. And so here I am today, still going.

It took me a while, but finally after all the thinking, reading, talking & listening, I figured out what that ‘thing’ was. And guess what-It’s all of YOU.

It was said to me once that

“If you’re mission is bigger than the ‘gold’, you can’t not get the gold. The ‘gold’ is ON the way, not IN the way.”

Let me explain…

I spent years swimming every single race thinking about myself, and only myself. I would think about a specific goal time or place that I wanted to hit, or a person that I wanted to please. I thought that if I didn’t keep these things at the forefront of my mind, that I would fail. Funnily enough, I always swam my fastest when I didn’t think about these things (so I’m not quite sure why it’s taken me so long to get here-but hey, I’m just thankful). After ‘failing’ at so many races, I started to question my swimming, why I was doing it, and why I wasn’t getting any faster (this was me reacting to my struggle, rather than absorbing it). I knew it wasn’t physical, because it wasn’t showing up in practice-but only in a race. I thought about these things so much that I lost sight of the real joys of the sport and how much I had already gained from doing it. Then it hit me… that extremely hot day in Madagascar when I went for a dip in the ocean (refer to blog post “A little piece of heaven” if you don’t know what I’m talking about).

Long story short, I realized that my love for swimming was not for fast times or gold medals, but for the amount of people I could reach in a positive way through the skills I’ve gained from the sport. I then thought about all the ‘material’ joys I had experienced throughout my swimming career, and what it was that brought me so much happiness from these achievements-and it all came down to YOU.

YOU-the child who learned how to swim under my watch

YOU-the children who will go to the Olympics and win medals for The Bahamas

YOU-the multiple Bahamian children who have attended and will attend University on a swimming scholarship

YOU-The Bahamian public who now semi-follow swimming

YOU-the child that has and will break all of my swimming records

You see, it isn’t about me at all, but about the small difference I may make in the youth of my beloved Bahamaland and the world.

It is about absorbing the struggle, to reach a place that will touch not only myself, but others as well. And believe it or not, that tiny, minute difference it SO MUCH BIGGER THAN THE GOLD.