The Butterfly

I believe in keeping my head straight, and not letting jealousy, insecurity, or greed rear its ugly head. I believe in believing in myself, and knowing that I can only do the best I can do, and sometimes it will be good enough, and sometimes it won’t. Most of all, I believe in concentrating on the lane I'm in, and letting all of the other lanes next to me fade away.

Let me explain: I am an avid swimmer. I have been swimming since I can remember; when I was old enough to stand, my father has been showing me all that he knows in the little pools of our various apartment complexes. Every summer that I have been alive since the age of two has been spent mostly in a swimming pool, where I would play with my friends, from dawn until dusk, until my skin was all in wrinkles. I always raced them (when they were obliging) and of course I always won. By the time I was in elementary school, I had really honed my abilities as a swimmer.

It was only natural that I join the Gamecocks swimming team in Columbia, South Carolina, which was the children’s version of the real college swimming team. It was awesome, being able to see the hovering figures come into the locker rooms after practice, dripping wet and teasing each other with jokes and towel-whips. When I climbed upstairs to the pool arena, with two Olympic-size pools and one diving pool, it overjoyed me to see the water still in movement from their wake. I always jumped in and started my warm-up laps, pretending I was one of them.

The team was divided into three levels: Bronze, Silver, and Gold. As a beginner, I started out on the Bronze team, but because of my experience, I quickly moved up to Silver. But Gold was my real goal. The Gold team was famous for having hell week which meant that the coach would make us swim until we threw-up our last meals--for seven days straight. I finally made it to the Gold team after two years of swimming for the Gamecocks, when I was a ten-year-old child.

My father’s favorite stroke easily became my own: the butterfly. It’s apparently the hardest style for most people to swim because it takes incredible upper-body strength, but it came naturally to me. The coach noticed this and started to prepare me for the main butterfly event at the first meet of the season.

It was a home-meet, and I remember to this day jumping off that block, swimming those one-hundred yards so calmly, paying attention only to my breath and the wave of my own body, ignoring the shouts of my team-members, the whistles from my parents, and everything else around me. I was all Zen. As soon as I finished the laps and hit the wall, my team was at my head screaming, “You made third place! You’re going to the finals!” I was shocked. I had always done well in events, but never well enough to make it to the finals. Not only did I make the top ten, I made it to third place! I had out-swam about fifty other girls.

Later that evening was a different story, however. I remember standing on the block and thinking that every girl was better than me, even though I had beaten most of them only hours earlier. Where Zen was supposed to be, there was only anxiety and paranoia. From the moment I entered the water, I kept my eyes on the swimmer to my right, until I was back at the wall. This is hard to do while swimming the butterfly, since the style requires that you are constantly looking ahead. While I was racing, I was wasting my emotional energy thinking, “Is she beating me? How much farther is she ahead of me? I have to be faster!" and my physical energy turning my head to the side to watch her. I finished the event in seventh place. I was disappointed in myself, and I knew that my team was disappointed in me too.

Since then, I've come to realize that the best you can do for yourself is to keep your head straight, be confident while you swim, and keep your eyes to your own lane. Try not to focus on the swimmers you're competing against. That is not to say that you should always ignore everyone around you; sometimes I keep my eyes on a well-paced swimmer in the pool, so that I stay motivated to swim faster and longer, as a sort of guide. Some people are in our lives for that very purpose. But we need to trust our own abilities, our own limits, and our own bests, instead of worrying whether our neighbor has a better car, a handsomer spouse, or a greener lawn, for examples. When you do that you only lose your own energy--and let everyone else pass you by.