☙ On Skating

Taking up a skateboard is like taking up a paintbrush or a pen – the creative possibilities are truly endless. A person could skate every day for decades and not run out of new tricks to learn. There is constant innovation and improvisation in the skate community. Skaters freely share tricks with each other; then someone adapts a trick and offers it back to the community. Skaters learn to look at the environment as a fluid thing, constantly re-purposing walls and curbs and benches and stairs and railings, even rocks: the skater looks at an everyday object and asks, ‘What can I do with this?’.

The skate community is indeed a community, a tight-knit group of supportive friends who bond over their common creative interest. It doesn’t matter how old you are, whether you are a boy or a girl or a man or a woman, whether you are rich or poor, whether you are part of the in-crowd or not – all that matters is that you skate: if you skate, you’re part of the community. Skaters are extremely encouraging to one another, tapping their boards on the ground to acknowledge the accomplishments of other skaters, often strangers. You will frequently see skilled skaters recognize the accomplishments of new skaters struggling to get their first tricks.

Skaters appreciate skaters because everything we do is earned. Every trick learned is the result of dozens, if not hundreds, of failed attempts. We embrace failure because it teaches us, and we embrace anyone who shows the strength and resilience to embrace failure. Every trick is earned, sometimes with bruises and scrapes. Not only do we learn to fail successfully, we also learn to fall and get back up again. Such is life – sometimes things go wrong and we fall down and get hurt . . . then we get back up again and move forward. Every trick is earned by conquering fear. Every skater learns the process of facing fear and methodically breaking it down. In this, we become not only better skaters: we become better human beings.