Great Fish essay
“If you fall behind, run faster. Never give up, never surrender, and rise up against the odds.” -Jesse Jackson Jesse Jackson could not have said it better when coming up with this very inspirational quote. Santiago from The Old Man and the Sea struggles to catch a giant marlin in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Santiago struggles with many different things like Fatigue, A cut hand, and even having to battle Sharks to keep his prized marlin safe. A problem that i had to overcome was reaching a certain tier of play in my Favorite video game League of Legends. In life facing and overcoming these obstacles is a skill that all people need to have and should be very highly valued.
In League of Legends there is a ranking system that puts you in a tier based on your skill level. 99% of players get put into the Bronze skill tier and must work their way up from there. That is where my struggle begins. Now this was a challenge for me because when you win a game you gain some points. Reach 100 points and you can move up a rank. If you get bad teammates or you don't play well one game you lose points. That makes it so that people are on edge and will give up right when something goes wrong and that leads to loss of points and a painful climb to the next tier. I played and moved up and down ranks for about 6 months. Doing this made me feel stressful at times and excited at others. Sometimes i lashed out at people from being upset about going down a rank. It all sounds bad but in the end it wasn't, and i had a lot of fun playing one of my favorite games ever!
The reason i went through all of this mental and emotional strain is because i wanted to prove to my friends and other people that i was actually better than 90% of players who are never able to leave the Bronze tier of play. Along the way i did have some help from a lot of people. Some directly and some indirectly. People like Satchel were there to play a game or two with me to help keep my head straight as i tried climbing the tiers. I also had help from Gbay 99 on youtube who has a great channel on league of legends and how to overcome the bad teammates and climb through the tiers. Not everybody was helpful though, there were also the people that were on my team that got off to a bad start in the game and pretty much just gave up and started yelling at other players in the games chat box. (We call those people “toxic”). These toxic people were a huge Shark against me and were a big reason why it was so hard to move up the tiers. I finally overcame these “toxic” people by learning how to calm them down before they got out of control. Sometimes when you mess up all you want is for somebody to notice and reassure you that its not the end of the world, and that is exactly how i dealt with these toxic people.
Santiago also faced many struggles and by far the hardest struggle to deal with would be fatigue. Santiago was out on the water for 3 days after pulling in this huge fish, battling sharks and dealing with blood loss from a cut in your hand you would be so tired and just worn out that i am not even sure how Santiago was able to make it. “Then too, he remembered he hasn't eaten since he took the bait and he is huge needs much food” (P.g 74). I chose this line from the book because it shows how Santiago doesn't have a lot of food to last him through the 3 days that he was out in the sea, and our bodies need food for energy. To overcome this problem of fatigue Santiago decided to eat a Dolphin raw. I do agree with how Santiago faced this problem because he reallty dident have any other options, it was either eat the dolphin and get some energy or probably end up passing out from a lack of it. Santiago never gave up in his fight against the Marlin and that is what hemingway was really trying to tell you.
The main message in The Old Man and the Sea is that even though you may be down on your luck and things aren't looking good, your day will come when everything turns around and you get your chance. I also think that i learned the same thing from my struggle, that you might get a team full of sharks one game and team full of turtles in another you just can't quit and give up when you get that team full of sharks. Also i think that people can learn a lot from Santiago's struggle and how you just have to wait for your opportunity and when you get it you have to pursue it and really make it worth something because certain opportunities don't come very often. Lastly i think that one thing can be learned from my struggle, its that there are going to be people in life that are not going to be nice, and are going to be selfish and only think of themselves but you have to overcome people like this because in the end who cares what they think or say or do if you're striving and pushing for your goals because in the end you're going to achieve your goals and they're never going to come close.
(P.S I did end up reaching silver tier in LoL)
