There were a lot of moments I experienced joy in my life , most of them had faded away as time passed by. But one evening I had in Singapore has never faded away in my memory, that was the best evening in my life.
Quite a few years ago I worked for a Taiwan company. I went to Singapore to attend an International Show with my colleague in March every year during I worked for this company. We always stayed in a nice hotel called River View Hotel .
In a nice evening during my business trip in Singapore, I stayed in the same hotel and my hotel room was just overlooking a nice small swimming pool. After work , I stood by the window and watch people swimming in the pool as usual. A western young father and his baby in the pool drew my attention immediately . The baby was about one year old boy . This young father was teaching his son to swim. The little boy didn’t wear any buoy and he just held his father tightly by putting his arms around his father’s neck. They just left their heads above water. The father was spinning around and the boy was kicking water away. It was just like they were drawing a circle. The father was the circle center and the boy was radius. They were giggling away. They seemed quite enjoying this swimming lesson. I couldn’t imagine this would happen to a Chinese father and son in the same situation. Most of Chinese parents wouldn’t allow their children at this age to try any dangerous sport or game. It seems Chinese parents are too protective of their children, which results in their children not brave enough or lack of adventure spirit when they grow up.
Inspired by the brave father and son, I ,as a swimming learner with just 2 or 3 hours experiences, decided to go for a swim alone at about 9 pm after the father and son left as I didn’t want to disturb them. There was only me in the pool . Firstly I tried to swim along the edge of the pool so I could grab the edge when I couldn’t hold myself up that I wouldn’t drown myself. Some time later I could swim better and then I started to try to swim across the pool. I did it successfully after I tried a few times. Then later I tried to learn dive and backstroke swim . Finally I did both successfully. The evening was late and I began to slow down and got relaxed .I let myself drift in water with my face up . I began to appreciate the beautiful surrounding things : the sky was still in light blue decorated with some white cloud( how amazing it was!), there were a lot of green trees and some purple flowers with sweet fragrance by the pool. I just floated in water and let the tender water and nice breeze stroke myself quietly. I was so contented and I was very proud of myself. I did learn how to dive with the fear of drowning myself .I always felt good about myself after I worked hard and achieved something. It seemed that this beautiful world belonged to me only . I seemed to have the freedom to think about anything or nothing at all. I really wished that I could have a magical power to freeze the time. So I stayed in the swimming pool as long as I could in that beautiful evening. There was always a gap between language and feelings as I couldn’t find the right words to describe how wonderful that evening was !
That evening’s experience has been encouraging me to keep trying new things even if I was afraid of failure. I believe I can always achieve something if I try. Courage is being afraid but going on anyhow. The evening’s experience also reminds me to discover and appreciate the beautiful things in my life , such as :beautiful trees, flowers ,sunshine, fresh air and nice people. It’s a shame really, most of people don’t realize or appreciate the beautiful things around them in their lives. The evening’s experience encourages me to try new things and appreciate whatever I have. In the sense of this point , that evening is the best evening in my life.
