Midori- prompt #2
The lessons we take from failure can be fundamental to later success. Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience?
My one big failure of my life was made while I was swimming in a pool. It’s been 5 years since then, and I still remember it very clearly.
My swimming career started simple: my father wished me to, when I was 4 years old. It was my very first time I tried in sport. Although I started reluctantly, I kept continuing swimming for 13 years, and still going on. Now, water is my best company to keep my life healthy, unstressed, and enjoying. It has taught me a lot of things.
When I was in 6th grade, my first tournament of swimming happened. I had swimmed for 8 years already. I can still recall that tournament in my head, vividly. I saw audiences, standing and sitting and cheering for the children, I saw the pool, I saw all the other coaches standing beside their swimmers. I was confident, but nervous. My coach stood right behind me, and advised me before I swam, that “everyone’s nervous, take your breath, don’t think too much”. I remembered those words correctly until now, but not in that swim.
As soon as the whistle was blown, eight swimmers jumped in the pool. It went really fast. I was heated up, trying to breathe so quickly, that when I finished my butterfly strokes, I couldn’t believe it. It felt like it finished in few seconds. As a result, I was placed 6th out of 8. I rushed too much, my swim was way out of pace, and I was tired as a stone. It was done. I was ashamed how I swam, how I didn’t know other swimmers swam so fast and good.
The tournament remained bitter in me. For a couple of days I was depressed of my failure. It kept me reminding every time, even outside swimming, of how pacing is important, how stableness is crucial. Then I noticed how I grew in some way. My time has improved, faster than any swim before. Surrounded from other faster swimmers, I lost my pace, I reached the goal perplexedly, and recorded the best time ever. Just like how my time grew, after such an experience, there was something that taught me to learn. And that wasn’t just for swimming, but it mattered all the way in my life. How to not repeat my failures.
Currently, I am a highschool student in an International school. I lived all the way in Japan, surrounded by multicultural friends. I speak two different languages, have met dozens of nationalities. These all fascinates me. Everyday I find new knowledges, understands different cultures and meet new friends, taste unseen cuisines. My future is still vague, but one thing that I strongly wish for is to travel around the world, to see even more “unknowns”. I hope that when achieving my dream, I would experience many failures as that tournament. And after building up all the things I would learn from them, I would become a focused, flexible-minded and collaborating grown-up, traveler.
My swimming career started simple: my father wished me to, when I was 4 years old. It was my very first time I tried in sport. Although I started reluctantly, I kept continuing swimming for 13 years, and still going on. Now, water is my best company to keep my life healthy, unstressed, and enjoying. It has taught me a lot of things.
When I was in 6th grade, my first tournament of swimming happened. I had swimmed for 8 years already. I can still recall that tournament in my head, vividly. I saw audiences, standing and sitting and cheering for the children, I saw the pool, I saw all the other coaches standing beside their swimmers. I was confident, but nervous. My coach stood right behind me, and advised me before I swam, that “everyone’s nervous, take your breath, don’t think too much”. I remembered those words correctly until now, but not in that swim.
As soon as the whistle was blown, eight swimmers jumped in the pool. It went really fast. I was heated up, trying to breathe so quickly, that when I finished my butterfly strokes, I couldn’t believe it. It felt like it finished in few seconds. As a result, I was placed 6th out of 8. I rushed too much, my swim was way out of pace, and I was tired as a stone. It was done. I was ashamed how I swam, how I didn’t know other swimmers swam so fast and good.
The tournament remained bitter in me. For a couple of days I was depressed of my failure. It kept me reminding every time, even outside swimming, of how pacing is important, how stableness is crucial. Then I noticed how I grew in some way. My time has improved, faster than any swim before. Surrounded from other faster swimmers, I lost my pace, I reached the goal perplexedly, and recorded the best time ever. Just like how my time grew, after such an experience, there was something that taught me to learn. And that wasn’t just for swimming, but it mattered all the way in my life. How to not repeat my failures.
Currently, I am a highschool student in an International school. I lived all the way in Japan, surrounded by multicultural friends. I speak two different languages, have met dozens of nationalities. These all fascinates me. Everyday I find new knowledges, understands different cultures and meet new friends, taste unseen cuisines. My future is still vague, but one thing that I strongly wish for is to travel around the world, to see even more “unknowns”. I hope that when achieving my dream, I would experience many failures as that tournament. And after building up all the things I would learn from them, I would become a focused, flexible-minded and collaborating grown-up, traveler.
501 words