Skateboarding isn’t just a sport; it’s a relentless boot camp for the tenaciously clumsy and the stubbornly bruised. Imagine yourself: a novice knight with a wooden steed, tasked to conquer the asphalt kingdom one gravity defying trick at a time. The holy grail? The kickflip—a mystical move where the board twirls like a pancake in a chef’s skillet while you’re supposed to land back on it, feet first, as if nothing miraculous just occurred. Simple, right?
For most folks, stepping onto a skateboard is like stepping onto a banana peel—on ice. The sensible ones will promptly step right back off again, having immediately assessed the risks outweigh the rewards. Skateboarders, on the other hand, step on and stay on. They fall off, they get back on. They fall again, and they get back up again. Repeat this process, oh, roughly a thousand times. Or more. The pavement meets your knees, your palms, your ego, each encounter teaching a little more about perseverance. Skateboarders learn never to give up, because in skateboarding, the sweet satisfaction of finally landing a kickflip after a thousand tries is an unmatched thrill. It’s a triumph of grit, of denial of defeat, of pure, stubborn endurance.
Like this, skateboarding teaches you to persevere. But it also teaches something else. A quiet courage—the sort that makes you persist despite a gallery of raised eyebrows and suppressed smirks from onlookers. Each skid and stumble under their watchful eyes could feel like a miniature trial, yet as a skateboarder you swiftly learn the art of disregard. This crucial lesson in nonchalance is as valuable as any trick you might execute on the board.
Being indifferent to how people judge you becomes a necessary skill. As a skateboarder encased in a bubble of concentration you can hardly afford the luxury of self-consciousness. The real challenge on the pavement isn’t mastering the physics of the kickflip; it’s overcoming the psychological barrier of public failure. As your board flips and clatters away, so too must all cares and fears—until you are measured not by the stumbles, but by your own private view of how well you’re doing. The judge and jury is you.
This philosophy of caring less about what others think—though it sounds like a rebel’s manifesto—is deeply pragmatic. In skateboarding, as in life, the less you fret over the opinions of bystanders, the more freely you can explore the edges of your capability. For the skateboarder, this means pushing through the falls to finally land the trick. For others, it might mean speaking out when silence is easier, or choosing a path less trodden but more personally fulfilling.
So even if you’ll never set foot on a skateboard, you likely have your own version of it—something a bit out there, a bit odd, uniquely yours. Whatever that may be, lean into it. Embrace its quirks and the lessons it teaches you. Be proud of it. Each moment of not caring about others’ opinions adds a layer of Teflon to your psyche—things just don’t stick as much.