Humility Served Two Ways

Sunday morning we had a massive snowstorm in Minneapolis. Most people were staying off the roads. I thought it would be an ideal time to go ice skating, since it was likely that there would be very few people on the rink.

I was right.

I'm 37 years old and have only been ice skating for a few years. I'm halfway decent at it - I'm good enough for it to be a workout and not to fall. I'm not good enough to do anything interesting.

This is what a talented figure skater might look like.

As I was skating, I saw a figure skater doing spins and turns and ice-dancing to the bad Christmas music that was being played at the rink. I will never be that good. Maybe because of age, maybe because of physical pre-disposition, maybe because I use hockey skates, maybe because I'm just unwilling to take the chance of falling - but I will never be that good. I'm okay with that. I can possibly learn to do more, and I do intend to learn to be a better skater, but I will never be doing flips and spins and turns. The skater I had observed was most likely not older than 20.

David Tennant as a novice ice skater.

Also as I was skating, I saw a woman, probably older than me - if not, then probably about my age - who was holding the hand rail as she inched by. She was skating about as well as I did my first time, and she was very persistent. I realized that I had learned a lot in the past few years about ice skating, and that I am a much better skater than I was a couple years ago. Ultimately I do it for fun, but getting better at anything requires work and I am actually pretty good at this skating thing.

Humility is knowing what you are - what you have, what you don't have, knowing when you are the best person for a job, when you are the worst person for a job, and not letting any of that make into a depressed gloom cookie or pompous ass. It's harder than it looks. On the ice rink, I had humility served two ways.