Is Life Like Ice Skating in the Olympics?

As I write this blog on a frigid cold afternoon, I am recalling the past seventeen years of my life. It was just this past week that I retired from my WW coaching job. I am trying to remember where I was in my life seventeen years ago, how little my Natalie was, in pre-school--and now she is in her third year of college. I have lived in six houses in those seventeen years--five of which are about 2 miles apart from each other or less. And yes, I feel like I have gone around in circles in some ways. But there is more.

There is a treasured aspect to consistency. Learning a job, knowing what to expect, feeling that there is a predictability to your life--that matters. Having a special sense of purpose to what you are doing matters even more. Growing in your character, your skills, developing your talents keeps life interesting. In that way, I feel like we all move in circles, leaving our mark on the world.

And like all things--they give way to new things. Endings create new beginnings. The lessons learned, the experiences shared, the memories created form the start of a new chapter.

I have to confess, I wasn't all that interested in the Winter Olympics except for a little of the ice skating. I don't know how they do it, but the repetition, the big circles--the figure 8's, the twists, spiraling through the air and sometimes crash landing and sometimes gliding upright on a razor thin edge of steel is a reminder to me that we take the best of what we know, what we've practiced and worked on and repeated and somehow flow that into the next step.