Learning how to swim

I fell through the ice and slowly moved to the bottom, outstretching hands, trying to cling with my fingers to the light far beyond the surface tension of the water abyss. The cold and darkness enveloped me from all sides, drawing me closer to them, trying to freeze my pain, to freeze my heart, so that I could hide from desperation in the shadow of indifference. I thought that the insensitivity was the only thing I needed from the day of my birth, which, as a bulletproof vest might hide my heart and soul from the eyes of the sharpshooter called Life.

I was scared. Frightened not by my failure, but by helplessness in the struggle with tears, which strove to fall from my eyelashes. I have learned a long time ago that the failure in this world is worth far more than a few hundred damaged nerve cells. Every day we are at a crossroad of the Fate where Miss Luck and Mister Diligence struggle for our right to walk the path of the winner. Sometimes they lose.

I think that day my Guardian angel was too tired to defend my right of the victory. I was the only person at the battlefield opposed to the enormous forces of Failure, fighting not for the life, but for the death. All what I could think of was that I had to meet the expectations of someone else, not to lose my face in front of other people and look like a fool. There was neither enjoyment of competition nor joy of new encounters with old friends, whose shoulders have kept as much pressure as mine have.

I, the youngest person in a psychology section of the Minor Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, have seen the older students, who has already had the experience of the defending of the scientific work, and felt myself a small silly rookie. I sat in my room in my own castle made of books and notebooks covered with neat handwriting slightly inclined to the right and studied filling my head with more facts, more descriptions of biological processes. I clearly understood that was not a city or regional stage, where I enjoyed public speaking, participating in the conference and listening to other experiments. At that time, I was the only one representative of my region, a person who outperformed everybody else on a previous stage; and a huge pressure squeezed my heart.

I did not know what was going to be on a test there, but I tried to learn as much as I was capable of, or even more. I knew I worked too hard to fail as easily. However, I also knew that everybody else worked hard too, that not everybody can get a star form the firmament.

I have seen the results of the test the same evening we have written it. They were hiding behind the thick fog or a pillar of water. My eyes have captured them just for a moment, and after I could not see because of the tears coming on my. I was just about to fall down, to give up, and to hit the bottom of the water abyss. My mind was blank for a moment, but faces of other competitors brought me back. I cannot give up like this; I had to fight until the end! I knew that I could not rely on the luck all the time, so I have found the strength to withstand the pressure of water, to swim towards my goal and to achieve. Because of this understanding, I was able to outperform everybody at the conference and get the third place. Now when I see Confucius’ phrase “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall” in my psychology classroom I smile, because that is a lesson I have already learnt.