Reading Reflections on the Aspects of Suffering

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Reading Reflection
Article 1: Breaking the Waves. In her sixties, a swimmer revives an old dream by Ariel Levy
Ariel Levy wrote the story and published it in The New Yorker in 2014. It tells the story of Diana Nyad, a long-distance swimmer who is determined to achieve her dream of swimming from Cuba to Florida and place a new record of being the first to swim that distance. She achieved the dream when she was over sixty years old, beating life-threatening challenges on the way. Nyad achieved her dream with the help of Stoll and other friends, who gave her moral and mental support.
Nyad was suffering old age, which gave her and other stakeholders endless worries. At the age of 30, Nyad retired from swimming before achieving her dream to swim from Cuba to Florida, a distance that no one had ever swum in the history of this noble sport. Retiring at thirty means that Nyad thought she was old to continue swimming. However, she does not let her dream die as she decides to return to swimming at 60 years solely to achieve her dream. "But it seemed impossible: you could never do at sixty what you did at thirty, let alone what you couldn't do at thirty. The body disintegrates every year, every hour." This quote pitches the age suffering Nyad, Stoll, and other people in the story suffer from. When Nyad fails in her initial trials, Stoll and Nyad's medics try to talk her out of continuing the sport.
Nyad's story inspires generations on the importance of persistence. She does not give up despite her age. However, Nyad is worried about the adventure because of her age. She knows that the body's functioning de...