Choose to Swim

            I've wanted to do this for a long time. I've even attempted to start a blog several times, only to have it die within days. Due to that track record, I suppose that there is no real guarantee that this attempt will succeed. However, I'm going to try again anyway. This time around, I am armed with much more experience about life than I had in previous attempts. I think I actually have things to say that are worth taking seriously now.
            I don't want to lay out an entire introduction to myself here. I think my future posts (because they will exist this time!) will be able to speak for me in that regard. You'll learn who I am. And besides, introductions get cheesy and you end up seeing an overly perky version of what I wish to be rather than what I am. For that same reason, the "About Me" blurb doesn't say a thing about me. Maybe someday I'll come up with something witty to put there, but for now you get a quote:

"The fact is that when a man is out of his depth, whether he has fallen into a little swimming bath or into mid ocean, he has to swim all the same."
--Plato, The Republic

           I came across this quote while reading a excerpt from Plato's The Republic for my ancient world civilizations class. This class is pretty much the bane of my existence. It would be great if there was no homework and no reading quizzes and no tests and it wasn't at 9 in the morning. (This is much too early for a college student to be awake.) I enjoy the lectures and some of the reading and that's about it. Tangent about my feelings for said class aside, this quote is wonderful, and the selection it came from, which talks about Plato's ideas about women being educated, is wonderful as well. Read it sometime.
            This quote sums up something I have believed my entire life. No matter what life throws at you, and no matter how hard it throws it, somehow you need to deal with it. Giving up just isn't an option. I don't just believe this because it seems wise or it looks pretty on a card placed on a plate of cookies from your visiting teachers. I do understand what it feels like to be out of my depth and to face the options of sink or swim. I know what it feels like for the metaphorical waves to pound mercilessly until drowning almost seems preferable. Trust me, though, its better to swim and fight to the shoreline than to let the water drag you under.
             The tide is liable to rise and and once again whisk you back out to sea, even once you  think you're safe. You will have to swim again. And again and again and again. You may spend more time floundering in the water than laying in the sand, but that is the way life is, and there is a reason for it. You learn things out at sea, and you bring them back with you. You become better and stronger because of what you have survived. I've lived it--I'm still living it--and I choose to swim.