I’d have to say, the most important quality I’ve tried to learn and hone this semester–by far–is flexibility; the quality of bending easily without breaking. It’s an extremely underrated skill, and one that’s much harder to master than it sounds. It’s a skill I learned as a child, and yet still haven’t mastered it as an adult. 

When I was young, my mom was a pretty strict disciplinarian. If you spoke back to her, that was twenty minutes in the corner nosed touched to the wall, if you disobeyed her, that was a three-page essay on how sorry you were for doing so, if you purposefully harmed your fellow sibling–beware the wooden spoon. But there was one rule, in particular, I despised the most. Every morning, my sister and I had to stretch for forty-five minutes in order to get a measly fifteen minutes of screen time on our pink bedazzled Nintendos. Like most children, I had no patience, and couldn’t sit still if my life depended on it. So forty-five minutes of touching my toes and doing that stupid butterfly stretch was my idea of cruel and unnecessary torture; I would’ve taken the wooden spoon instead, any day. But as always, mother knows best, because I was flexible as shit. I could do splits in any direction, those one-legged extensions for days, bend back and touch my feet to my nose; the works. And it was a useful skill to have as a kid; let me run faster, jump higher, prevented injuries and gave me the upper-hand when roughhousing. But as I grew older and stopped listening to my mom, as teens tend to do, I very quickly lost that ability. Because it takes patience, discipline, and actual effort, and that wasn’t really my thing as a sixteen-year-old. 

I’ve learned that the same goes for all meanings of what it is to be flexible. It takes patience, discipline, and work, to be adaptable, and fluid, and have that ability to bend without breaking. It’s not a skill that’s inherent in most people. Whether it be the physical, mental, or emotional connotation of flexibility, it takes an obscene amount of practice and effort. What this semester has taught me is that it’s in every way shape or form worth it. The world is always changing, and moving; growing then deteriorating; nothing is certain accept uncertainty. Cliche, but true. Just when you think your life is gaining some stability BAM, something unpredictable as hell freezing over happens. I mean it just snowed the other day. In May. 

To sum it up, you’ve got to roll with the punches. You have to change, and move, and bend, with the world before it breaks you. Fire and brimstone they said. HA. Try snow flurries and a pandemic. 

Now let’s go sledding mofos.