My 28-Year Lesson

Barbara: Remember the other day when I wrote about quantum steps and how I noticed that, after lots of frustrating and seemingly futile attempts to learn something, I will learn it “suddenly”? Well, welcome to my world of skiing.

I’ve told you before that I am not an athletic person. I wish I were. I love sports, love watching them, love playing them. But I am useless at doing them. The only thing that keeps me “in the game” is my utter child-like embrace of play and my middle-aged don’t-give-a-fuck-that-I-suck attitude. But that doesn’t stop the looooonging from welling up deep inside me to have the game click in, to feel the natural rhythm of it.

Phil introduced me to skiing when I was 16. I loved it from the first hit of fresh, cold air to the last minutes of aching muscles and wind-burned cheeks. But I SUCKED. We skied pretty much every winter since then, and while I did get better and better, the rhythm, the ease, the flow, just refused to penetrate my musculature. It was all jolting turns and tense body parts.

Until 4 years ago—suddenly, I got it! The longest overnight breakthrough in history! Suddenly I knew how to shift my weight, lean to each side, carve my skis as if I’d been … doing it all my life. So my first thought for you today is: It may take a long time, but if I can do it, you too can learn some foreign thing if you a) love it and b) keep at it.

Skiing in Panoram, B.C., 2008: the year I "got" it.

My second thought is that learning to ski is a lot like learning to live well—and I’m going to share my hard-won lessons with you:

Skiing Lessons as Life Lessons

1. Breathe.
2. Relax into it. If you don’t, you’re likely to suffer unnecessary pain. Or pass out.

3. Stay in the “now”. If your mind is somewhere else, you could hit an unexpected bump and go flying.

4. Sometimes you will hit a bump and go flying. It hurts on impact, but maybe next time you’ll remember to breathe and relax into it.
5. It was from learning to ski the bumps (aka moguls) that I became a good skier.

6. You might be skiing with friends, family, or a team, and you will definitely need to be respectful of other skiers on the hill, but the bottom line is, you can only ski for yourself.

7. There’s no better reminder of the two scales of the world around you than when you’re skiing: there’s the stuff that’s right in front of you that will determine whether you stay on your feet or land on your ass, and then there’s the larger glorious world around that—in the case of skiing, it’s pure snow, flecked trees, mountainous terrain, maybe even a breathtaking vista. You want to respect both views without unduly favouring one or the other.

8. And remember to stop and sip the chai latte. There’s nothing like giving yourself a break every once and a while. Your muscles might be a bit tight when you get back to it, but you won’t regret the breather.

And now I leave you with these thoughts to mull over while I hit the slopes—the hills beckon. I’ll check in later, maybe over a chai latte (or gin-tonic, depending on the time of day :-) ).

Deb: Barb, this is so true. Every word you say. What a sweet perfect analogy. I am going skating today and will keep that in mind and my “stop and sip the latte” will be pancakes and syrup for Shrove Tuesday!