Becoming possible

I started ice skating lessons last January, with the goal of learning how to skate backwards and learning how to stop. My first attempts at both were frightening. But with practice, I was able to go from barely wiggling backwards to gliding backwards to gliding backwards on one foot to gliding backwards on one foot in a circle with my other leg straight behind me in the air. Oh, and I can stop on ice skates in three different ways. Every time I learned something new, I was afraid. This would be the time that I would fall. (And it was. I've fallen a lot.) (But mostly falling is harmless.) (The trick is to land on something fat and soft, like your massive derriere.) (My massive derriere has been bruised a lot.) And amazingly, with practice, the skills became not just possible, but even easy. I remember telling Tim that I didn't think there was any way I would ever be able to skate backwards on one foot twice the length of my body -- that's what I needed to do to pass the skill test. It wasn't fair, because of my height. Twice my body length was several feet farther than what the others in the class had to do. And now I skate backwards on one foot with no problems, several times longer than my body length. Thinking back, the change is purely amazing. How did I ever do that? How did something so very very hard become possible? And then almost easy?

About two weeks ago, at work, I found what seemed to be a fatal flaw in a research project. I had been working on the project for over a year with a collaborator, and we had a (long) draft of a paper already written, and my coauthor was set to speak on the work. And then it all fell apart. Over the weekend, my mind was spinning, sweeping out braids with surfaces (I'm a geometer), trying to understand what was really going on in this construction of ours. And then, by the end of the weekend, I knew how to fix the problem. And it was much easier! And our draft dropped from 40 pages to 20, and the coauthor gave his talk, and there seem to be very good consequences to our work that we had never seen before. How did that happen? How did something so very hard become possible? And then easy?

Just over one week ago, I became aware of another flaw in another paper. But this was worse. Much worse. I had already submitted the article to a journal, and the journal referee was the one who pointed out the error. I got the message on Friday night. I was scheduled to speak on the result at a major conference on Wednesday, in front of all the famous people in the field. I almost panicked. I would have liked to panic, but I didn't feel I had the time. I had to figure out exactly what was going on before my talk on Wednesday. So instead of panicking, or even letting myself cry, I immersed myself in papers from the 1980s. My mind was spinning, waking me up at all hours drawing circles inside of spheres inside of circles. And then, by the end of the weekend, everything clicked back into place, and I knew how to fix the error. (Draw the green circles first silly! Not the red ones!) And it was even easier than the original argument. And I was saved from what seemed to me to be a huge professional embarrassment. It was truly amazing, to the point of being almost miraculous. (My coauthor didn't think so -- he seemed to have no worries at all. In fact, he thought the referee comment was a good sign -- it meant our paper wasn't rejected outright. But then again, he wasn't the one giving the major presentation in a few days.) To me, it was amazing. How did that happen? How did something so very big, and so very scary, become possible? And then easy?

Yesterday evening, back on the ice skating rink, a new coach showed me how to string together some of the basic moves I had been learning since January. Three-turn to backwards crossover, leg up, step forward, and start over with the three-turn. I watched her do the moves, smoothly and easily. And then as I stepped up to try it, on my left foot no less (I have always been strongly right-footed), for the first time ever the thought popped into my head that this might be a good place to stop. Really. I'm almost 40. I'm too old to be learning how to combine three-turns and backwards crossovers. And then I forced that thought out of my head, because the coach was standing there waiting for me, and I did the combo (kind of). And it was slow, and very weak, and my arms were going the wrong way with respect to my legs and my head and my core (a year ago, I had no idea how much there was to think about when skating). But I tried it at least. And after trying it a few times, I thought to myself that I really really needed to practice this again, on my own. No more head telling me to stop here, you are too old, but telling me instead to go -- go do it more! The craziest thing? The weekend has just started, but my mind is spinning again -- not with geometric constructions this time -- but with figure skating moves. I want to learn to do those combos the way the coach did them. She didn't even notice that it was hard, and scary. She just put her feet together where they were supposed to go, and held her arms just so, and it was easy -- for her. That could become possible -- for me?

I think there is a moral to this post, but I'm not sure what it is. It's probably related to the amazing ability of human beings to learn and to change. And not just human beings in the abstract. Me. I learn. I change. Even at my age. (I'm almost 40!) This body of mine is truly, truly amazing. It thinks. It skates. I have no idea how it does any of that. How is any of it even possible?