Just keep swimming

This week, I have been thinking about the endless ocean of opportunities that present themselves always, but especially when we finish studying formally. It can be easy to get swept away in the tide as we feel excitement, overwhelm, uncertainty. And as I see it, there’s no harm in getting swept away - after all, that’s how one finds oneself on a wonderful, exotic, remote island!

Thinking of oceans, my mind wanders to the Disney Pixar animated movie Finding Dory. For those who aren’t familiar with the movie, what’re you doing friend, go watch it! And for the rest of us, we know it to be a very well-made motion film, which follows the story of a beautiful blue fish, Dory, through the oceans of the earth as she finds her long-lost parents. She has short term memory loss and is forgetful, but she keeps at her obstacle-filled journey of navigating marine life with the mantra “just keep swimming”.? And of course, like all living beings, she faces odds and dodges bullets (or the water versions of them anyway), meets other fish in the sea on her swims, and wins over the ocean beings on her way who daunt her. In keeping up the spirit of Disney movies’ happy endings, she reunites with her parents in the end.

Now the obvious moral takeaway here is that like Dory, one must be resilient, push one’s limits, and uphold an unwavering spirit through life’s joyrides. As I think about all this, in parallel with thinking about ways of finding opportunities that make sense for us, I am brightened by the thought that the Earth is 70% water and only 30% land, which means Dory had a way longer and more complex journey to navigate than we as humans on way lesser land would ever have! And surely they don’t have roads and systems in place like we do - another opportune advantage. So if Dory can find her route as a dweller of the vast ocean, so can we as land dwellers. We’ve got to keep learning and becoming a little bit better each day, give and ask our friends for help along the way, and ?just keep swimming? as Dory would say!