Anyways, I digress. So I went ice skating with Alex and Kevin. I'd been wanting to go during my entire three week vacation back in Washington but never did due to lack of funds and enthusiasm on the part of friends and family. However, it being my last day in Washington for who knows how long, I had a bit of leverage over my last-day activities. So we headed out to the sportsplex after a chilled morning of watching netflix documentaries and braved the ice.
To no one's surprise, Kevin was skating laps around us. I suppose being a Canadian, it's in your blood [...eh?]. In the beginning, I was super excited. I have always loved rollerblading, and am actually pretty good at it. However every time I go I seem to get the two confused and overshoot my capabilities on the ice, and after years of no practice I was definitely far from my professed skill. So as soon as we stepped out onto the glacial surface all those memories came back and I felt fear flooding back into me. I was trying to balance on motherfucking ice with sharp knives attached to my feet.
Of course, having talked up my enthusiasm for it so much I couldn't very well back out now. And so I began skating, albeit at a slow pace with an almost rhythmic pattern of obscenities. One of my greatest fears, however ridiculous, is that I will one day fall and knock out my front teeth. There are literally few fears more terrifying to me than this. So you can imagine my being on that ice, with its many indentations and suicidal maniac children skirting about, as a hotbed for my teeth-loosing paranoia.
I let that fear guide me for about the first 10 minutes. And then, as with most everything I do in my ADHD state of mind, I let my thoughts wander. Soon after I found the gentle gliding not so daunting, and the children actually quite cute and innocent. It was then that I had my ice-skating revelation.
They always say that in skating on thin ice, your safety is in your speed. For all intents and purposes this remains sage wisdom. But the fact is, whether you're skating on thin or thick ice doesn't always matter because either way life is a precarious ice block.
It's scary as hell, but often we get so clouded up by fear that we disassociate ourselves from any potential pleasure we may get out of that experience. I lost precious moments of being with friends doing an activity I had been waiting years to indulge in because of my preoccupation with the fear that I might fall. Ironically enough I never did, but it was in my moments of deep concentration and fear that I most found myself wobbling. In the end I performed the best was when I had faith in myself and essentially accepted the fact that I was in a dangerous clusterfuck of circling terrorists. When I accepted that the ice was there, I was there, and falling was probably inevitable but a central part of the learning process.
So my revelation is this: screw thin or thick ice--the fact is if you choose to get on ice in the first place, be prepared to fall, but have faith and confidence that you'll make it across. And usually, you will. Because that's life.
....plus, there's always the amusing possibility of sardonically watching the little midgets take themselves out of the Darwinian equation.
*look at that form, those lines! you must come here often...*
<3 What a revelation Sydney :o this is one of the many reasons I love you, you have so much going on in that head of yours, its just such a beautiful thing =) Love the last few blog posts btw, keep it up!
ReplyDeleteLove yuh!