Life Lessons Are Best Learned On The Side Of A Mountain

So I sat down to write this post about everything skiing as taught me. Being true to my nature I seem to have taken on a task that, simply put,  is to arduous. So in order to make it to bed at a reasonable hour and keep my sanity. I have decided to write the top 3 things that skiing has taught me ( please excuse this post's sappy nature, but I am currently listening to the acoustic version of Wake Me Up, and feeling oddly sentimental). Interestingly enough I recently was assigned to write a paper about the top 3 things I have learned since the start of my college education. Even more interesting was the fact that when all was said and done with that paper, not a single thing that I wrote down was learned in a formal educational setting. This paper was also the very first of my college career in which the periods were not grossly enlarged and that I actually wrote more than the bare minimum of the length requirement... This leads me to the first thing I have learned from skiing...

1. The most success is achieved when you are madly in love with what you are doing. It is not a secret that skiing was my first love. I can work for hours on end at just about anything skiing related, without batting an eye. Ask me to sit down and write a paragraph about just about anything else and I will procrastinate like no other. Take this post for example, I am actually enjoying writing it! (say what?) I never thought that I would enjoy writing anything. Anything.
2. Life isn't black and white. It isn't all about winning and losing. At some point for every single racer, the competitive racing ends. No matter what level you race at, it will end at some point. This simple fact has lead me to believe that it can't all be about winning and losing. After racing is over, there are no clocks, no start wands and no finish lines. It's the many shades of gray that make life interesting. Skiing is no different.
3. Friends make everything better. Well duh! This point is short because, well really, what can I say that will illustrate this more perfectly than skiing down a run with a bunch of your friends, all smiles from cheek to cheek. Come on, seriously, what is more fun than a Chinese downhill when no one is looking?

So in the words of Aloe Blacc "So wake me up when it's all over, When I'm wiser and I'm older, All this time I was finding myself, And I didn't know I was lost" Yes, Aloe Black actually wrote the song and sings it on the Avicii Album. Mind= Blown. 


Goodnight ski friends!