By Joao Carraro

At two–thirds of my 24km ultra marathon swim, my world shrank to a single burning point in my left shoulder.

Until then, the ocean had felt vast but manageable. The rhythm was steady. Stroke. Breathe. Feed. Repeat. But somewhere past the 16-kilometre mark, a sharp pain began to cut through that rhythm. Each time I tried to lift my left arm forward, it felt as if something inside the joint was tearing my muscles. By the next feed stop, I could barely move it. Completing a full stroke seemed almost impossible.
Out there in open water, there are no shortcuts. No one can swim the next kilometre for you. I had two choices: stop or keep going.

The pain was real. The doubt was loud. My body was telling me to quit. But something deeper was asking a different question: What kind of person do you want to be when it hurts?

I chose to keep swimming.

Not because it was heroic. Not because it was smart. But because I realised that the swim had become bigger than the distance. It had become a mirror of my life.

In life, we all hit that “two-thirds mark.” The moment when the initial excitement has faded, the finish line is still far away, and the pain—physical or emotional—becomes undeniable. It might be a failed relationship, a business setback, an injury, betrayal, burnout, or trauma. The kind of pain that makes even lifting your “arm” again feel impossible.

And just like in the water, we have a choice.
We can stop. Or we can keep swimming.

That swim taught me that resilience isn’t loud. It’s quiet. It’s a decision made in the middle of discomfort. It’s adjusting your stroke when one arm won’t cooperate. It’s finding a new rhythm when the old one breaks down. I had to shorten my stroke, rotate differently, rely more on my right side, and accept that the pace would drop. Progress didn’t look pretty anymore—but it was still progress.

Life is the same. When we get hurt, we don’t always come back unchanged. Sometimes we have to adapt. Reroute. Slow down. Heal while moving. The lesson isn’t about pretending the pain isn’t there. It’s about refusing to let the pain decide the outcome.

That swim also taught me the power of focus. I couldn’t think about the remaining eight kilometres. If I did, the weight of it would crush me. I had to think in buoys. In strokes. In feeds. One small target at a time.

When life feels overwhelming, the same principle applies. Don’t swim the whole 24 kilometres at once. Swim the next 100 meters. Make the next phone call. Get through the next day. Small forward motion compounds.

Most importantly, the swim taught me that limits are often negotiated, not fixed. My mind had declared, You can’t do this. My body argued the same. But by continuing—carefully, consciously—I discovered there was still something left. Not strength in the traditional sense, but grit. Commitment. Meaning.

Finishing that 24km swim wasn’t about beating the ocean. It was about meeting myself in the hardest moment and choosing not to abandon who I wanted to be.

Life will hurt. It will test our shoulders, our hearts, our confidence. It will bring us to that two-thirds mark more than once. In those moments, the question returns:

Will you stop? Or will you keep swimming?

The swim taught me that we don’t control the waves, the currents, or the pain.

But we always control the choice to take the next stroke.