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Newly published essay "Turtles Swimming Club" is like a stone making a soul-searching splash in our hectic, fast-paced lives where the value of being slow and steady is losing ground.
Author Lee Seo-hyun, a journalist at Dong-A Ilbo daily, rediscovered the value of being slow and steady through her turbulent life in recent years ― suffering a displaced disc caused by accumulated physical and mental stress from work, pregnancy and childbirth, and thyroid cancer.
She found her sunken body and soul salvaged gradually after jumping into a pool for swimming, a rehabilitation method she chose for the first time in her life with her body too weak to play field sports.
As a novice swimmer, floating on water was a tall order in the first place. Yet she made it thanks to a coach's guidance that challenged her career-driven obsession with speedy learning: do everything slowly.
"We will do nothing today but just walking around the pool together, then go into it and try to float on water," the book quotes the coach as saying. (page 26-27)
"I lay on water, imagining I am lying on a soft blanket … It was not like something that was fearful or suffocating. I could stay afloat doing nothing."
Looking for a pause from hectic life? This 190-page essay could be a solution.
