Lessons from Skiing

I’ve delayed posting anything after my first entry in paralysis over perfection.   Maybe I am terrible. Maybe I have nothing to say. 

Maybe I need to care less about what others think and more about what it means to me.  

Just do it.  Move forward.  Move anywhere. There were times in my life when I have thrown the cards up in the air, feeling them fall all around me, hitting my face, shifting my glasses.  A right mess.  I have crawled on my knees to pick them up and reorder them.  Sat crying in the disarray, not knowing how to move.  

Not knowing is the hard part.  I am not comfortable with being wrong, despite being so far more often than being right.  And I did move forward each time, surviving to live another day, make more mistakes.  Learn a bit more.

I learned to ski late in life, in my mid-forties.  I would watch the ski schools with their tiny students, 5 years olds following the instructor like ducklings, fearlessly flying down the mountain, as I crawled along, worried how I would be transported if I should break a hip.  

What I’ve discovered in skiing is that the more you try to control, the tenser your muscles grip, the more likely you are to fall and break a hip.  

There is much to learn from activity, from physicality.  When we let things happen, they happen as they should.  When we breathe and relax, we can flow into that movement, whether it is skiing or running or living.  

So I decided I would leap out there and throw up posts like so much bad graffiti.  Hell, there’s no one reading them anyway.  I haven’t told anyone about this.  So what am I afraid of?