Reflections from Middle Age

Coming into Nozawa-Onsen we are confronted by a slope that sets my pulse racing. It’s below the ski lift, and although covered in deep drifts of white snow, it’s as black as they come. Immediately, despite having zero intention of going down a black run, I’m swamped in anxiety about this whole skiing malarky. Before we’ve even stepped out of the taxi, I’ve imagined a hundred things that could go wrong. There might be not slopes I’m comfortable with, I might not be able to remember how to ski, I might go careering off an edge and into an abyss.  

Not all of it is rational.

Skiing. What an extraordinarily weird destination holiday humans have created. To go somewhere mountainous, cold and snowy, with a variety of slopes and high terrain, and throw one’s self down them wearing a piece of wood or two attached to your feet. To  spend a day or two with calf muscles set to fire and to battle blizzards all in the hope of a blue bird day, a good hot chocolate, and a decent drop of grog and a story to tell around a warm fire at the end of it all.

Of course, there is more to it than that. The thrill of achievement, the wind in your face, the almost universal desire to conquer things. To do something different, to feel challenged and alive. To be in nature, and visit new and beautiful places. And when the sky is blue, the air crisp and still, and snow covers everything in fresh powder, it’s magical. The view from atop stretches out forever, and you glimpse that you are a part of something magnificent, nature itself.

We’ve been on a lot of skiing holidays – Canada, New Zealand, Europe, Australia (does that count?), and most recently Japan… And I’ve enjoyed pretty much all of them. But this time, less so. I spent a lot of time wondering why I was doing this to myself.

I’m going to fess up here. I am a skiing imposter. I like skiing holidays (in terms of going to interesting snow-bound places, being in the mountains, the village vibe, lunch on the slopes, hot chocolates, warm fires and après, and being “someone who skis”) far more than I actually like skiing, or snowboarding itself. All of those things that grab snow bunnies by the ear muffs and set them alight do nothing but fill me with fear. Going fast? Nope. Adrenaline? No. Trying new tracks? Scaring yourself silly?… really? Why?

And, at its heart, like imposter syndrome in all its forms, I think I’m just not good enough at it to be considered a skier. People who count themselves skiers, I think, swish merrily down the reds, looking cool and glam and in control. They are, at least from the outside, fearless and confident to tackle whatever might come their way. They like the feeling of adrenaline coursing through their bodies. They smile, know what they are doing, and if they happen to fall over in a puff of powder can elegantly hop right back on their skis and be on their way.

I, on the other hand, 20 years in, still totter about on the green slopes, clenched up with concentration, wondering if I’m going to be able to make the next turn, or whether I will go too fast, fall over, go backwards, be able to stop, ski into someone, break something, accidentally kill myself or someone else….

The anxious mind is a whirling machine of creativity when it looks for things that can go wrong, and a mountain covered in snow renders up endless possibilities.

I think a lot about anxiety because I’m in the grip of its peri-menopausal craw. My head is often filled with unbidden what-if thoughts, and I feel almost constantly on edge, waiting for something to go wrong.

The thing is, skiing is a lot more dangerous than sitting on a beach. People die or get damaged on the slopes all the time. Even people who are good at it. Just ask Michael Schumacher. There are a lot of things that can go wrong. A newbie snowboarder died at Nozawa this season. On the slightest of green slopes. Wearing a helmet. Doing everything right, one presumes. It’s not irrational to be a little wary, is it?  

But life is also inherently dangerous. It’s 100% fatal. There are so many, many things that can go wrong in life too. Illness, accidents, depression, decay, damage, death. And people die of the most mundane things supposedly safe in their houses. My mother-in-law coughed too hard dressing for a dinner party and had an aneurysm right there on her bedroom floor. Isn’t anxiety a perfectly rational response to this too?

Maybe, but it’s not helpful and feeling fearful leaches the joy out of life. Being on that ski-slope woke me up to the fact that I’m currently doing life like I do skiing. Worrying about things I have no control over. Things that haven’t even happened yet, and likely won’t.

Soaking up the steaming (and I mean 40 degree plus) water in the public onsen, I realise that I’ve forgotten of late that life does its own thing. That you can mitigate to a certain degree, but there is no world where you are safe from the vagaries of life. The next moment we experience is influenced by all the moments before, moments we have no visibility on. Life will play out the way it plays out. The coincidence of factors that can disrupt your world are out of your control. And letting your mind grapple with them, worry about them, feed on them, is a recipe for misery.  

But it’s not the only thing, I realise, that leads to anxiety. And this realisation comes from a throw away comment from one of my kids. “You ski fine mum, you just don’t think you do”. Interesting.

I mull that over picking my way down a little red hill, and I’m struck by a startling (somewhat sad) insight. At the heart of me, I believe I’m incompetent. I think I will fail. I don’t trust myself to cope. It’s a weighty realisation, but I can see it so clearly (now that someone has pointed it out to me) on the slopes. I approach skiing like I expect to fail rather than succeed. And, I realise, when I reach the bottom of the mountain unscathed, I do that everywhere in life. It’s my default setting.

All of us hold a story at the heart of how we conceive ourselves. A story buried so deep it may well lie beyond our conscious awareness, but which acts like a lens through which our experiences are filtered, and our behaviour formed. We only glimpse the nugget of this story, the hard kernel that sits like the stone of a peach at the centre of our self concept, through our actions in the world and our thoughts about it, and perhaps only when others hold a mirror up to you.

These stories aren’t necessarily true. But they are powerful.

I don’t know how you change that inner belief, other than just recognising it, and calling it out for what it is. Awareness is necessary, of course, but it’s not sufficient. It needs a determination to correct the record, adjust the thought pattern, replace the automatic thought with another. That is the heart of cognitive-behaviour therapy, actually. Not reality, I have to tell myself, often out aloud. Because it isn’t. I’m anything but incompetent. It’s a misbelief. Bollocks. A nonsense, as South Africans might say.

I blame a lot of my mental state of the disruption to my hormones, which I can do only a little about, but my mind has much to answer for. Because we all can learn to shift the focus of our attention. We all can engage our brains to shape our experiences a little more positively. It’s hard, but it is doable. It requires mindfulness, and practice.

So that’s a goal for this year. To accept life will happen, and to make the most of what we have while we it. And to be aware of that silly inner voice whispering rubbish into my soul, telling me I’m useless. And actively smother it with a great big squishy heart of self-acceptance, kindness, laughter, and joy. And competence. And to say without a shadow of doubt, of course I ski. Because that’s the truth.

Onwards,

Sharlene (Feb 2024)

---

Skip social media and subscribe to get these reflections direct to your inbox.