Sometimes, involution is also a waste of time | Scientific reverie

When paddling hard, don't forget to look up at your original goal in mind and avoid the waves that force you to turn around, otherwise you will be swept further away.

Written by | Carlo

After learning freestyle, I started swimming in the sea instead of in the swimming pool. I found that swimming in the sea is very different from swimming in the swimming pool. The wildness and power of nature that I experienced in the wind and waves are beyond the experience of swimming in the pool. I often go to the beach with a few like-minded people in the afternoon to feel the call of nature and purify my body and mind.

Of course, whether you can swim depends on God's blessing. Around the Dragon Boat Festival, the sky sprinkled continuous dragon boat water, which made it inconvenient to travel. I waited for many days, and when the rain was about to stop, I couldn't wait to rush to the beach and the sea in the afternoon of the first cloudy and rainy day. When I arrived, the beach was already very lively. There were mostly adults and children playing in the water near the water. There were several floating platforms in the sea about 100 meters away. You can swim over and climb up to rest, experience a moment of tranquility after exercise in the unfathomable sea, think about your worries, and in the distance is the shark net. Outside the net is the real vast sea, a few cruise ships, a few small islands, and other than that is the unknown world.

It was quite windy and the waves were not small that day, but after lying dormant for many days, I was still quite excited, so I dived into the water and swam hard towards the floating platform. The sea water was green, visibility was very low, and it was salty and bitter, so after entering the water, I was groping in the dark. I could not tell the direction of advance by breathing from the side of the freestyle, which was completely different from looking at the marking line on the transparent bottom of the swimming pool. Even so, I thought that the floating platform was only a hundred meters away, and I could swim to it in a few strokes when the wind was calm in the past. Although there were waves today and I couldn’t tell the direction, I just had to face the floating platform at the beginning, and I would reach it after flopping for a while, so I swam hard. Unexpectedly, the waves pushed me away from the initial direction without my knowledge. I was swimming towards the platform and against the direction of the waves, and then gradually turned to a corner with the waves. The corner gradually became larger due to my hard work and the combined force of the waves. The swimming trajectory unconsciously drew an arc. The harder I worked, the larger the arc became. After turning perpendicular to the waves, I actually turned around and slowly swam back to the beach. Of course, I didn't know this when I was swimming hard in the sea. I was just wondering why I hadn't seen the platform from the side during the breathing interval after I had been swimming for a long time and had swum a distance of hundreds or even thousands of meters. When I looked up from the water, I realized that I was the arc with a large arc under the pressure of the waves, and the direction had just begun to turn.

I quickly changed to breaststroke, raised my head and avoided the waves to swim to the platform, climbed up and lay down to rest, quietly listening to the ups and downs of the waves below me, and suddenly realized: Isn’t this involution? I wanted to concentrate my efforts and rush to the platform in one breath, but in the end I was almost pushed back to the starting point. This is the involution that the person thinks he is working hard towards the set goal, but he is unaware of it under the pressure of the waves - in other words - this is the involution driven by the waves, how sad!

This wave of internal competition caused me a little sadness while I was lying on the platform: I always heard people around me mention all kinds of depression and anxiety. People of all ages are in internal competition. Students are in the process of paper competition, teachers are in the process of talent competition, talents are in the process of hat competition, hat competition is in the process of power competition, and the powerful are in the process of greater power competition... It is not easy. In this environment where all horses are silent, there are not many people who really like to ponder knowledge, and the human nature of many so-called scholars is not as calm as they say. They want to get a lot but dare not take it directly, so they have to use conspiracy and means, and the environment becomes more cowardly and inward-looking. The ancients said that in this magical land, "there have always been few failed heroes, few resilient resistance, few warriors who dare to fight alone, and few mourners who dare to cry for traitors; they gather when they see signs of victory, and flee when they see signs of defeat." It is still the case now. Seeing the inward waves getting bigger and stronger, the people who throw themselves into them, whether they are determined or involuntarily, should not forget to at least look up at the direction of the waves while paddling hard, try to avoid them, and try not to be washed away by the waves. Otherwise, they will be like me who almost didn't swim to the floating platform. The harder I try, the more I will end up back at the starting point.

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