Beside You

When I decided to take up sailing in jc, the people around me never failed to ask why. Much as I kept to my story of expedient training for a lazy mind and sluggish physique, it was really the impression a tv drama left on me when they centred the lives of main characters around varsity sports. I still remember those vernal faces with their unabashed passion for life, embodied in that singular pursuit of racing on water; which child wouldn't mistake youth as the right to dive for lurking challenges? Such reflections roused my spirit, and then they were translated into a symbolic desire to learn to sail.

Truth be told, I volunteered myself for the shambles like an unsuspecting goose the day I joined the school sailing team. Each Colours award was exchanged with blood, sweat and tears. In staggering proportions (it's the one reason seawater stays salty). Accomplishment was the amount of verbal abuse I managed to secure within a single session of training.

But then, I also learned to fly. As if empowered with wings, I surged across the waters in full embrace of the wind. I felt the breeze on my face, in my hair, wrapped around my arms and legs; it was everywhere. I thought I was soaring, but it was really the water transporting me.

If the sails were my wings, the water is you. On my own, these wings would never have lifted off. Beside you, the possibilities take flight.