So help me somebody

 

I swim.

Sometimes I like to consider myself an endurance swimmer. Just the other day, I swam for an hour and a half. I sauntered out of the pool and bounced my way to the changing room. I felt like an Olympic champion.

The following day I revelled in my achievement. I was alive with a sense of accomplishment. I had waded my way into my history book. All I needed to do was to attract the attention of the swimming fraternity. Then I would be a 'celebrity'.

I went on a search for any such achievement, just to make sure that that 'feat' had never been attempted before. Leafing through the Google with that giddy feeling that I am the man, I chanced on a story that brought down my house like a pack of cassava chips.

 It was the story of Diana Nyad.

Diana Nyad swum an epic 117 kilometers, in 53 hours.  Unlike me who swam 2.7km in 1:30 minutes in a sparkling clean swimming pool, she swum in shark and jellyfish infested water: in a body of water that is always at the mercy of the vagaries of weather. To top it all, she is 64 years old.

She is at an age where many people consider that the age where the sunset of life is shinning its waning light into their hearts. At 64, the ordinary human body is weighed down. The skeletal frame struggles to support a body that is portly and loaded with its fair share of a life lived without regard to longevity.  

 At 64, the ordinary human mind has dreamt all there is to dream.  It has visualised  in precise detail, what can and cannot be achieved. It is at the point of shuddering at the effects of being too rush in undertaking risks.

 At 64, the ordinary African mind, body and soul, has assumed an elderly status. A status that is set to advice and not to adventure. A status that is defined by waking up, setting up a rocking chair or a rickety stool or a worn out mat by the front door and recalling yonder days when 'life was life'.

Out of this triumph Diana shared her lessons:  "One is, we should never, ever give up. Two is, you're never too old to chase your dream. Three is, it looks like a solitary sport, but it is a team."

In whatever we do, wherever we are, we should never, ever, give up. Persistence, it is said, is much better than intelligence. With an ounce of Diana's persistence, any run of the mill human being can soar beyond the clouds of 'human' possibilities.

 Age is indeed just a set of numbers. You are only as old as you permit yourself to be. The key to mind boggling achievement lies in ones thought. It is James Allen who said that a man is literally what he thinks.  It is ingrained in the human DNA to create paths where there was once a wilderness. Our duty is to inflame ourselves with the enthusiasm to pursue the seemingly impossible.

Life is a team thing. From crib to coffin, human beings are symbiotic. We can all get what we want if we help enough people get what they want, so said Zig Ziglar.

I am going to mix persistence, age, and team- work into a combustible cocktail that will explode me into the record books. To become a Diana Nyad or to be better than she will ever be, I need to swim a non- stop distance of 120km in 60 hours…so help me somebody.