Since I was young, I loved figure skating. The way people glide on ice so weightlessly. I always thought it had nothing to do with me. Turns out, many “impossible” things are just things you’ve never stepped into yet.
Getting in is easy. Understanding it… is not.
Once you enter, you discover that lacing your boots is a subject, choosing skates is a subject, sharpening blades is another subject. No one teaches you the full picture. You collect fragments from everyone, test them on your own body, and eventually build your own style.
By the time you’re skilled enough to teach, your earliest struggles are already blurred, as if they never mattered. But honestly, that was the most precious part.
Beginners quit not because they lack willpower, but because they’re scared, confused, and alone in a place no one else remembers.
When I first stepped on the ice, balancing on one foot was already a battle. Yet coaches would ask me to do steps they assumed were “very simple.” And I’d quietly think: Simple for whom?
Later, I learned: everything that looks simple has a mountain of complexity underneath.
Beginners are clumsy, sensitive, and they magnify fear. Falling on ice isn’t the painful part. Falling in confusion without being understood is.
Looking back, people don’t quit because they can’t suffer. They quit because they think they’re the only idiot in the dark.
They’re not. Every expert walked that same path they just forgot.
