A Pair of Fogged Goggles and Parenting

goggles

8:30am. I was in the swimming pool, just starting my first lap. Then the goggles started to fog up. At the end of the first lap, I couldn’t see much. I cleared the goggles, went on with my second lap. At the end of the second lap, I couldn’t see much again. At this point it’s becoming clear that it’s a pair of goggles that would fog up easily. I was annoyed. I bought this pair not long ago – after the previous pair serving me for more than 10 years and finally came to the end of its life with broken straps.

I had two options, with the fogged pair of goggles and only 2 lapse into my 20-lap goal.

Option one, stop swimming, leave the pool, go out to buy another pair when I get some time and come back to swim another day. Option two, keep swimming, endure the fogged goggles, and see what happens.

I weighed my two options during the third lap. And decided on the option two.

It turned out to be the best decision.

It got me to focus on what really mattered. Not what I thought that mattered.

You see, at that point of time, I was 3 months into swimming regularly again. After three years of neglecting regular and meaningful physical exercise, I was very pleased with the progress I was making. The distance went further – I could swim 1 kilometres in one go instead of 250 metres with lots of (long) breaks in between. Time became shorter – I could finish 1 km around 30 minutes whereas 250 metres used to take me forever. And I become better with freestyle – I now swim 1 km of freestyle with relative ease, whereas every 25 metres of free style used to result in gasping.

So every time I swam I really paid attention to how fast I was going, and how much improvement I made that day in terms of time and distance. I would routinely check the clock on the wall to see how much time I used to finish each lap, and conducted a mental calculation on the improvement, or non-improvement, comparing to the performance the day before. Sometimes I did better, sometimes I did worse. Most of time, I was too busy calculating the time that I couldn’t even figure out if I did better or worse before the next lap started. I was quite happy with my progress, and was becoming a bit obsessed with checking my performance.

Until my goggles started to fog up easily.

I could no longer see clearly the clock on the wall after each lap with fogged goggles. So I just kept going. Instead of calculating the time and improvement/non-improvement, I suddenly had all these time and mental capacity to take notice of the movements of my arms, the force with which my arms hit the water, the trajectory of my arms and legs under water, the breathing in and the breathing out, and the sensation of water flowing against my body when I moved forward. It suddenly became clear to me that I felt something very different.

For the first time in 3 months, I felt I was truly living the moment of swimming, instead of thinking of the swimming.

Not being able to ‘see’ clearly visually, I felt I could ‘see’ much more clearly inside me. 

It was an unexpected and delightful realization. I was in the flow. I felt free.

At the end of the 20 lapse, I finally emerged from the water. I cleared my goggles. I glanced over to the direction of the clock on the wall. I almost cried. I hit the best ever personal record! It took me just 27 minutes to finish my laps of 1 kilometres. It may still be a laughable result for some, but it was something truly unimaginable for me only three months ago.

Not being able to see with a pair of fogged goggles turned out to be a blessing. It unexpectedly forced me to focus on what REALLY mattered. It’s not about calculating how much time I spent in each lap. It’s about the breathing, the gesture, the force, the coordination of the arms and legs, and the flow. Once I focused on these that mattered, the improvement of the performance was almost inevitable. The result just followed.

Isn’t it also true in trying to raise a trilingual child? How many times we have focused so much on the number of vocabularies, the amount of books we read in which language, the linguistic game we engaged, the calculation of amount of hours we spent in each language, among other things, that we lost sight of what really mattered – the joy of reading the book, the meaning that our child is trying to convey, the laughter we share, the memories of the silly hide and seek game in the backyard. If we truly live in the moment, focusing on what really matters, enjoying the relationship with our child using the language that we want to cultivate in our child, then the result will just follow – in our case, a trilingual family.

I have decided to keep the pair of fogged goggles, because I only need to see what really matters.

Well, ok, I will get myself a new pair of goggles that do not fog up easily. But I will keep in mind that I only need to see what really matters, with or without goggles.

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