Insight Spring 2021

Figure Skates: The Key to Unlocking My Sacred World Caroline Park ’23 In his book Religion: The Basics, Malory Nye defines a text as “a study that encourages us to widen our sense of ‘text’ beyond the specifically written… [so] that we can understand important issues of culture, and by extension of religion” (154-155). With this definition, one can interpret figure skates as a sacred text. While they may not be a written text, my figure skates have unlocked the door to the world of figure skating. This sacred world, which can be compared to the sacredness of religion, has helped me better understand how to face adversities in the real world. The values figure skating instilled in me tremendously influence every decision I make, both consciously and subconsciously, even four years after retiring prematurely due to extensive injuries.

To me, figure skating is far more than just a sport, since the lessons I have learned from it pertain to all aspects of my life, connecting my skates to the idea of thick description. In Clifford Geertz’s essay about "thick" and "thin" description, he describes thick description as the significance of physical motion, where it has the ability “to discern meanings, to discover the intentions behind what people do, to detect the overarching significance they attribute to their rituals, institutions, and beliefs” (267). When looking into the greater significance skating has had on my life, I think of the several lessons I grasped from the ice that I would not have been able to master if I had never skated. Some of these lessons include learning how to get up after each fall, regardless of how difficult it may be, having patience with myself, finding joy in the bad days whilst remaining humble to the good days, and most importantly how to love myself and something else so profoundly, which has certainly made me a better person. Since I learned these lessons when I was young, they became some of the key characteristics that have made me the person I am today. Skating developed my resilience, physical and mental strength, grit, perseverance, and perfectionism and became beneficial to me even outside of the rink. These lessons have tremendously helped me navigate through my recent medically challenging years, and I highly doubt that I would even be alive today if it were not for the acquisition of these lessons that were exclusively obtainable from figure skating.

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