Fighting the fast current, frigid water skimming past your silver scales, catching your breath in the water for mere seconds before having to leap back out, all of this to reach your hopes and dreams.

“The Salmon Who Dared to Leap Higher” by Korean poet Ahn Do-hyun recently translated into English, is an unknown short story, but can easily be applied to our lives as high school students. 

Every year, the salmon’s migration patterns take them back to their birthplace where they will reproduce and die. In this short story, vast shoals of salmon begin traveling through the Bering Sea, and an eagle suddenly notices something different in the shoal – a glittering point in the sea below. The fish also noticed the eagle above and scattered. The eagle attacks the glittering salmon and with his talons, grabs him for his next meal, but the fish escapes from the grasp of the eagle. 

After his experience with facing death, Silver Salmon begins pondering his life. He once thought of himself to be the same as the other salmon – seawater blue as the rest of the shoal, at least until his sister alerted him otherwise. This difference caused Silver Salmon to feel divided, so he told his fellow salmon to look past his silver scales and look into his heart to appreciate that he was more than his silver scales. The other salmon failed to look past his appearance because they saw him as the reason the eagles soared above them and potentially attacked by predators. Big-Mouth Salmon, the leader of the shoal, forced Silver Salmon to travel in the middle of the shoal on their journey upstream to disappear in the shoal. 

Silver Salmon stands out, not just because he is silver, but because he has his own thoughts. The upstream journey taken by Silver Salmon relates to something the salmon can’t currently see, which are the dreams and the future of each salmon. 

As high school students, we can relate to this story. We enter a huge new school as freshman, new fish in a large sea. We have hopes at the beginning of high school to graduate and do something amazing after, but we have no idea what is to come. 

Throughout high school our dreams may change. What will happen may not be what we expect. High school is full of change and challenges, and it often feels like swimming upstream. School is challenging and may cause us to face many obstacles, just like a salmon swimming upstream. Though, you don’t know what the future may hold, all the work we’re doing now and the fight to swim upstream, may end in a purposeful mission. We may find our soul’s mission.

When have you felt like you are swimming upstream against the current? Can you see how brave it is to face the challenges and persevere? Have you felt a glimpse of purpose by being different from the “shoal?”