Skateboarding Is A Conversation You Have With Your Own Limits

• Posted by Dez Fontaine May 24 Filed in Personal #personal growth  #Authenticity  #skateboarding  #street culture  #self-discovery  41 views
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  So I was at this spot last week, nothing special, just a ledge by an old warehouse in a neighborhood that's already half-gentrified and half-forgotten. And I'm watching this kid, maybe fourteen, trying to kickflip onto the thing. He's been at it for like two hours straight. Not landing it. Not even close. Just eating concrete, getting back up, adjusting his board, trying again.

  And I realized something that nobody really talks about when they romanticize skateboarding. It's not about conquering anything. It's about having a conversation with the one thing that will always be honest with you. Your own body. Your own fear. Your own actual skill level versus what your brain thinks you can do.

  That's the real deal nobody writes about.

  See, skateboarding gets packaged a lot of different ways. It's rebellion, it's freedom, it's art, it's a lifestyle, blah blah blah. All that stuff is technically true but it's also the surface-level Instagram version of something way more intimate. When you're actually on a board trying to make your body do something it doesn't know how to do yet, you're not thinking about any of that. You're in a conversation that's just between you and physics and your own willingness to look stupid.

  That's radical in a way that's hard to explain to people who don't skate.

  I've been watching this evolution in the community the last few years where skateboarding has become this thing that's safe enough for corporations to slap on commercials but still real enough that the actual community can keep it. And there's this weird tension there. You got brands trying to make it palatable for suburban dads, meanwhile you got skaters who are still pushing spots that would make your insurance agent cry. Both things are true at the same time.

  But what matters, what actually matters, is that conversation I'm talking about. Because once you start skateboarding seriously, you understand something fundamental about yourself. You understand that every single progression you make only happened because you failed at it repeatedly. Not metaphorically. Actually. You fell. You got hurt. You looked ridiculous. And then you did it again.

  That kind of honest relationship with failure changes you. Not in some cute motivational poster way. In a way that actually bleeds into how you handle everything else in life. You stop needing permission to try things. You stop needing to be good at something before you start it. You get comfortable being uncomfortable because you've literally been uncomfortable on a skateboard a thousand times and survived every single one.

  The kid I was watching, he never landed that kickflip that day. But he left that spot different than he came in. His body knew something it didn't know before. His brain understood the arc of the trick a little bit better. He was closer to something real.

  That's the conversation. That's what skating actually is.

  People ask me sometimes why I still skate at my age, like there's supposed to be some expiration date on it. Like once you're an adult you're supposed to switch to golf or working out or some other thing. And I always give them the same answer. Because the concrete still talks to me. Because I'm still learning something about myself every time I push off. Because the conversation between me and my board and my body is more honest than ninety percent of the conversations I have with other people.

  Skateboarding didn't save me from being a boring adult. It made me understand that boring is optional if you keep saying yes to the conversation.

  So here's the real question. What conversation have you been avoiding having with yourself because you're too scared of what the concrete will tell you?