Drowning/ Salomon Kamagi/ Essay

Drowning

Salomon Kamagi

Since the beginning of time, words have been defined by their actual definition and their dictionary definition. As time went on, most words' meanings have become more abstract and can mean more than any words on paper could ever describe. For example, the word 'drowning' is defined by the dictionary as “death caused by suffocation when water or other liquid fills the lungs,” but I believe that you don’t have to be choking nor does water have to be filling up your lungs in order for you to be drowning. I believe that you can still drown while standing on dry ground; I believe that stress and emotion can drown you. You don't have to be submerged in water to be drowning. In fact, you don't have to be touching water at all. In thinking of the word ‘drowning,’ I'd like to compare my workload to water; each new assignment added to my workload is another drop of water in my already overflowing tub of a world. I drown over and over again, and my tub never stops filling. Those who assign the work pour in buckets of water without any regard for my emotions. I was already drowning. The only difference is that now I can't swim up. In fact, I can barely see the surface. Usually, to save yourself from drowning, you'd rely on a helping hand or a life saver. You'd have to rely on someone or something else to save you, and sometimes, that's the only thing you can do. But in my definition, drowning doesn't necessarily mean that you are stuck hopelessly waiting for someone or something to save you. It doesn't mean that you're weak. It just means that you are unequipped to manage what life has thrown at you. You can always help yourself, and all it takes is a little bit of hard work. All it takes is to “swim,” but the problem with that is that most people, including myself, never learned how to ”swim.” They never figured out how to drag themselves out of hard situations,

so instead of “swimming,” they just drown. Just like physical drowning, my definition functions with the famous saying, “if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” Similarly, if someone simply pulls you out of a suffocating situation, you’re doomed to return to it; however, if someone teaches you how to pull yourself out of a suffocating situation, you'll never drown again. So when someone is drowning, we must ask ourselves if that person needs to be saved or do they just need to be taught how to “swim.”

Although the two definitions share the same name, their meanings are very different. The word drowning in the physical sense means to literally suffocate, but what I believe to be the true definition of this word is so much more. I believe that in drowning you don't necessarily have to be physically drowning, you just have to be drowning on the inside. Let’s help others learn to “swim.”