Ice Skating Wohoo or buhoo!

Ice Skating - does it bring chills to your mind or excitement or both? I will go with both :)

I have been thinking all along how I sucked at almost every sport ( :( !! $%#$#) - well it's mainly because I never really tried my hands (or more to say 'legs' :P ) on anything!
Then one fine day I decided to change that notion. Lets try and explore something I am absolutely alien to - I thought! Ice skating came pretty close :) Not alien in the sense that I never heard about it or didn't know about it, but never really imagined myself in the ice ring. Alright, I just signed up for it and started waiting for the first day of the class to never come :D But fortunately or unfortunately it did! When I first set my foot on that ice ring - the first thing to flash in mind was if I really wanted to do this? I kept thinking - Why the hell do I want to break my leg or sprain an ankle. Isn't life just happier and way better without it :)) Hmm just 6 lessons, five more to go - I will somehow pass my time holding tight to the walls and never think about it again :P

At that time it was hard to imagine myself even standing away from the walls, without any support, just on those skating blades. I felt I was learning to walk all over again, taking baby steps and fumbling at every moment, trying to hold anything that was close enough and within my reach. I was a child again. There was one significant difference though! A child doesn't know
what fear is while we adults have it in every other corner of our mind in some form. Those 3 yr olds just went zooming around me and I was trying to stand, march with baby steps with fear that I was gonna fall!! But I haven't fallen even once. How do I even know how bad it hurts? I just keep saying - it depends on the angle, position and momentum we fall with. And I just assume all these three parameters are going to play against me when I fall :P

I wonder how easy it would be to learn almost anything and everything if we could just let go off this fear. We can make progress otherwise too, if we have the will and determination. I can't say a whole lot about the fear factor, but I can certainly work better on the latter two. I am still fearful and still death scared to fall, but I am making progress with the will to skate and determination to learn. Now I can glide somewhat without any support - wohoo! Hoping this will not turn into buhoo :))