Rad on my Rollerskates.

Happy New Year!


Oh, wait...it's February. Probably time to stop using that.  Bummer.  It's such a happy little greeting.


Speaking of the New Year, I ran into someone recently who had done something pretty remarkable.  Let's call this someone "Jake".  This year, Jake set 37 New Year's resolutions.  That's right: 37.  The first thing I thought was how the heck would you even begin to track so many? 


I'm a Type A.  We think about things like this. 


Anyway, Jake told me that some of them are simple things like "drink more water" and "be kinder to people".  But, in private, Jake revealed to me that a lot more of them are very personal in nature and have to do with making efforts to change himself.  A lot.


I was intrigued.  Change can be good.  


Still reeling from talk of Jake's 37, it then dawned on me:  I am no longer a fan of making New Year's resolutions.  Meaning: I don't make any.  Why the big change, when I used to basically "make out" with this time-honored tradition?  It's simple:  I tend to set some resolutions during the year anyway.  So why buy into the end of the year hoopla and stress myself out just because everyone else is, too?  It's like me dating a guy and having things go really well.  Why would I turn around and date other guys just because my friends are all about playing the field?


After coming to this realization, I've noticed that my to-do lists are often a funny mirror of this tendency of mine to resolve things on a regular basis.  Inevitably on any given day, they will read something like this: 


pick up more liquid iron
call Dad
be here now and breathe
pay Mastercard
have fun everyday
get a pedicure



See?  Part practical, part..."resolutional".  I'm beginning to think that change, for me, is kind of a constant.  I'm usually attempting to do better or at least to be more aware on a consistent basis.


Given my own tendency, I was intrigued with Jake's plans.  But honestly a bigger part of me was just plain sad.  I mean, 37?!  Crikey!  That is a lot to want to change about yourself!  And even more so, a lot more to try all at once.  I get it--we're all works in progress.  We're supposed to embrace change.  In the words of Oprah, we're supposed to bravely and enthusiastically move towards our "best self".


Still I had to think, did he really have that many changes to make?  Was there really that much of a need for so many improvements?  He seemed pretty good to me.  I silently questioned whether he liked himself all that much to begin with.  And if he didn't, I found myself hoping that one day he would.


Voltaire said, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good".  Jake's list made me wonder: have we gotten so focused on trying to be better (or perfect) that we sometimes fail to see what is already good?



When I was about 10, I had a favorite pastime.  It involved my old school rollerskates, rainbow legwarmers and the slightly sloping hill of my quiet block.  When my siblings were playing at the houses of their friends and my best friend Karen was not able to play, I'd skate up and down my block by myself, perfectly content.


Oh my God, how I loved to skate!  


Sometimes I listened to my Walkman.  Other times I'd just sing to myself as I moved along.  Usually it was a tune by Michael Jackson or Wham!  For a while I was not great at roller skating.  Probably a long while.  I fell a lot.  Sometimes I remembered to wear knee pads and sometimes I didn't.  So sometimes I had cuts on my knees and sometimes I didn't.  If I got too much speed going down the slope of my block, I would have to awkwardly dive onto a neighbor's lawn to avoid falling on the gravel.  Thank God for soft summer lawns!  On other occasions, a rock or twig proved disastrous against my uneven skating gait.  But really, none of this mattered.  Because I felt like a rockstar on those skates.  I was having an insane amount of fun!  I was zooming up and down my block like some kind of superhero! Life at that moment simply couldn't get any better.  I was rad on my rollerskates.  And that overall feeling of contentment trumped everything else.  


Could I have been better?  Sure.  But was I already happy with just being good?  Absolutely!  I would never translate this talent to anything remarkable or grow up to join a badass roller derby.  Still, each time I skated, it brought me such an overwhelming joy.  Unintentionally, I was not letting perfect be the enemy of the good.  I was just plain embracing the good.  And I wasn't complacent or lazy when it came to trying my best on those skates but I was happy with myself as I was.  I was joyfully in the moment.  


Since February is a month focused on love, I have a little challenge for you: be ok with who you are, right now, as is.  Because chances are, it's someone who's probably pretty great. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.  My hope for this challenge? For all of us to experience a genuine, non-gooey acceptance of our good as well as our "bad".  And for everyone to feel, in their very own way, rad on their rollerskates.