Skiing as an Analogy for Life
Note: This was originally written on December 29, 2022 but was published on February 8, 2023.
Today, I had the chance to go skiing again. Peacefully riding up the ski lift as a solo skier, I came to the same realization that I did while skiing in the beginning of the year in Korea (in February). What better way to end off the year than feeling the same sentiment as the beginning.
Firstly, when people consider skiing at a first glance, it seems like a sport based on hills and usually 3 main levels: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Sure, there may be more detailed levels at some slopes (e.g. upper intermediate), but that’s besides the point here.
In actuality, there’s an infinite number of paths possible for any one slope. This is because, for each slope, you have an endless number of choices about the angle, position, and speed that you want to go down the hill.
Therefore, the “advanced” slope isn’t really advanced if you “pizza” your way down it (aka taking it slow), and likewise, the “easy” slope isn’t really easy if you just choose to straight shooter down it. Thus, I’ve come to the conclusion that skiing is like life in that at any one moment, you are always at crosspaths of decision making. Sometimes we wonder if our lives would’ve turned out differently if we chose to do XYZ instead. However, skiing makes me realize that it’s not just the singular choice that makes the difference, but how you choose to proceed after that – the mindset with which you tackle the turns, your reaction to facing a sudden steep hill, and how you choose to get back up after you fall.
Without adrenaline in your body, the first slope always feels scariest. This mimics the flow state of life, such that if you haven’t yet found your rhythm or reflected on your strengths, then you might be taking it rougher in the early stages of life. However, in both skiing and life, one you have found a bit of momentum, you’re able to be more confident in your ski strides and your decision making in life.
Similar to life, in skiing, even if a bunch of people take the same path as you, they don’t necessarily have the same experience. There’s some consolation in people ending up at the same destination or outcome as you, but how deeply they have reflected upon that experience is all up to them. Likewise, in life, you make different decisions about where you put your efforts and to how much. At certain points, other people might be at the same “level” as you, but everyone truly differs in what they choose to focus on – one major tradeoff being, for example, to focus on more “standard intelligence” versus “emotional intelligence.”
Emotional intelligence may be hard to see (as there’s rarely any worldly achievements or competitions to measure how much you’ve reflected on yourself), but people can feel it when they interact or talk with you. It’s embodied in the way you carry yourself, whereas, with standard intelligence, people may have received a lot of awards out in the world, but you really don’t know how much they’re working on themselves on the inside. Sure, they’re happy from one standpoint, but are they really happy? What does it even mean to be “happy” and is the concept of happiness overglamourized? Don’t we just end up living a life where there are some pockets of happiness and some pockets of sadness rather than seeing happiness as a thing we never have but will finally get once we achieve XYZ?
At the end of the day, this is to say that skiing and life is as complex – or as easy – as you want it to be. If you wanted to, you could simply see skiing as the act of hopping onto two pieces of metal down a pile of snow. If you chose to, you could also see it as an analogy for the beautiful complexity in life amalgamating different people’s life paths and embodying your own as you make decisions both big and small.