Blog Your Heart - Jan 2012

OK - here I am with my promised blog your heart post - a little bit late, But I do hope it will be worth the wait...
Last week, for my TUM post - I mentioned that I would be swimming in the Midmar Mile next weekend...and that Kayla-Fern had participated in her first show jumping event - and it got me thinking about LIFE....
Having already competed in the previous two years Midmar, I kind of know how it goes....
At the start, there is lots of splashing and enthusiastic kicking...and sometimes I have been kicked and sometimes I have kicked someone else...It is all part of the fun - Also with all the splashing and excitement, I always swallow some water and then take a breath to cough out the swallowed water - AND swallow some more water....Once the race gets underway, everyone settles down, and I kind of find my own space in the water...it is a feeling of peace and contentment ...and lonleyness - it is the wierdest thing, surrounded by many other swimmers and lifeguards along the side of the channel that we swim in and specatators watching from the beginning and people standing and cheering at the finish, and I start to feel lonley.  I think I feel lonley, because, I am the only one who can actually finish this race....Yes, there are people there (Lifeguards) who will haul me out of the water for my own safety, but to actually finish the race, I can rely on myself and myself ONLY....
I compare my swimming race (and any other event can be the same) to life...the training that I have put in are my life skills (schooling, education, work experience etc).
My swimming training partner, is the most important people in my life (parents and husband and friends and family - both past and present), the people without whom I would not be were I am today...
The other swimmers around me, are the general people in my life that I know, my work colleagues etc - past present and future...some of them in the race may say an encouraging word or two and those are my mentors and teachers in my real life.
The lifeguards are the people who have been in my life for a reason, been there to help me through a particularly rough time, these people could be the people who are really important to me, or could just be someone who was waiting on the side lines of my life to give me smile on a bad day....Whoever these people are, I am glad that I do not have to get into the water (do Life) without them.
The hard to deal with aspects of the race - tiredness, cramping, getting kicked, irrational fears (my own personal fear, is being attacked by a shark or crocodile - even when swimming in a large swimming pool) etc, are my challenges in life, and the negative people I have met in my life's journey....Just as in live, it is not the fact that those challenges are there, but how I deal with them, that makes me the person I am....
One thing that I acknowledge about my swim, in the past is that a DNF (did not finish), was unacceptable (to me), no matter what the reason - I would rather not start, then start and not finish....MMMM - I wander if I am starting to understand that in LIFE, Failure, is not the end of the world....It is something that I have to learn to deal with and try, try again....JUST KEEP SWIMMING, JUST KEEP SWIMMING....
Lots of love