Memories of Metal Skates and New Possibilities

My first skates were the metal kind that fastened to your tennis shoes.  We wore them outside skating up and down the street and making a lot of noise as we learned to skate and made sparks with our metal wheels on the pavement.

 My mom made sure we wore knee pads and elbow pads.  Looking back it’s a wonder we didn’t kill ourselves scooting around learning to skate on those metal wheels.  I remember going to the skating rink not long after that and being amazed at how much faster and smoother the rubber wheels rolled.  The rubber wheels intimidated me at first, after all I learned on the metal wheels; they had friction and made a LOT of noise.

 Suddenly, I was in a boot instead of something that fastened to my shoe, and the wheels were practically silent, with little friction.  I didn’t know you could tighten them so they wouldn’t roll so fast and no one suggested it, so I fell a lot at first.  Gradually though I got the feel for it, took off in the new direction and never looked back.

 So often we set our comfort zone on things we know and are used too.  It’s not that those things are great, or even that we are using something we want to continue to use forever; it’s simply something we know and are accustomed too.

 Yet sooner or later life will hand us the opportunity to upgrade, to reach for something new and possibly better than what we are using.  If we are up to the challenge to first recognize the possibilities and take a chance, then even though we may fall a few times, in the end we can wind up zooming off in a whole new direction and wondering why we held on to the old way of doing things for so long.

 Cherry Coley ©