I had a great conversation with Miss Melanie Ellsworth on Sunday about gymnastics, and she said something that really got me thinking: "really they just don't get it" This was said in reference to her parents, and I completely agree. Maybe they do, but it doesn't seem that they understand what its like to be in the gym. To work your butt off because you love it and there isn't anything you would want to be doing more right then, even if it does mean sacrificing ripped hands and bruised legs to make your kip on the bar (or even not doing your kip, but still trying), or getting a beam bite because you tried just a little bit harder to stay on.
It's different.
It's different then practicing at home. Doing a handstand in the hallway isn't anything like doing a handstand out on the mat. It's the same handstand, but yet it is so much different. It's family, I can spend just as much time talking to my coach about the results of the National Homeschool Debate tournament as I can just about anyone, and more so than I can most of the people that are in my family. There is a connection that is far different and in some ways far deeper. If I could I would spend my life at the gym... oh wait, I already do :-P
I want to spend the rest of my life doing gymnastics, and inspiring other people to do it as well. I want to own my own studio. I want to change the face of competition gymnastics. I want to take a bunch of 15 year old kids to the level 5 competition and kick butt! I want people to realize that motivation has two forms: fear, and love, and that the former should never be used. I want gymnastics to be a sport where you continue on for as long as your love of it continues. I want to compete level 8 when I am 40 years old, just to show them that it can be done. But for now its all just a dream. Maybe one day, it will become a reality.
2 comments:
you have some great ambitions there, beth. I wish I knew what i wanted to do with my life. I wish you the best of luck.
Do you want know what I think?
I will tell you anyway, kept working the gym, that you, are working for now, and go college, work at the gym, in the Summer, then after College, buy that gym!
and the gym own that your plan is to buy that gym someday!
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