A sweet video that circulates on social networks shows Tony Hawk, master and lord of skateboarding, helping his daughter to jump into the void for the first time on a skateboard. In the fatherly act there is a huge lesson on how to overcome fear.
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Sometimes when you wake up you feel scared.
A strange anguish creeps up the bed, between the sheets to lodge somewhere in her heart. In a fraction of seconds, perhaps before he is fully conscious, he goes over the pending tasks that will threaten him during the day: the things that didn’t go well, the calls he has to make, the overwhelming reality of that project that haunts him with deadlines. delivery that seem impossible to fulfill.
Sometimes when he wakes up, he doubts. Of himself and his ability. From the decisions he has made and from the distant port to where they could take him. He doubts he can find his way back in case of getting lost, because he knows that absolutely everyone, one fine day, could get lost. Or fail.
Sometimes when he wakes up, he would rather stay still in the void full of unknowns that cloud the new day. It happens especially on Mondays, when the uncertainty of the week that begins seems unbearable.
Just one of those days a video comes to him by chance: a little girl of about ten years is standing on the edge of a skate ramp with everything and her skateboard. He wears a baggy T-shirt, blue jeans, a helmet in shades of purple and pink, and a pair of knee pads that look too large on his frail frame. She doesn’t move, just stares into the void that stretches before her eyes, fearful. In front of her, at the end of the ramp, a slim man dressed in black watches and encourages her.
“Don’t lean toward me, go straight.” That is the key.
He is not just any man. This is Tony Hawk , perhaps the greatest skateboarder who has ever stepped on the face of the Earth. The girl is her little daughter Kadence Klover Hawk who tries to jump into the void for the first time on a skateboard. And even if you have the best teacher anyone could imagine, taking the step requires courage, determination.
Kadence assumes the position to launch, but then hesitates and returns both feet to the platform. Fear dominates her. The girl makes a sign to her father to stand right in front of her, trying to hold on to something that can give her security. Tony Hawk not only obeys her, but walks over to the ramp to take her hand. Then he walks away again and for 25 long seconds, he just watches.
That is the moment when she really must overcome fear. Just like any of us. It is the moment when we are standing before the void, ready to jump into the unknown, when we can doubt ourselves the most. The voice of reason whispers to us that what we are about to do is irrational and dangerous. That our idea doesn’t make sense. That if we go on we will fall, we will break and then we will not be able to get up. Those 25 seconds of doubt in Kadence’s life are what move us once she, determined, shifts the weight to the foot that rests on the skateboard and throws herself into the void. Seeing the action, Tony Hawk takes off and lets her follow the little journey that will mark her life alone and independently.
The girl does not fall. Once the movement has started, it moves forward by itself and inertia takes care of everything else. His father yells and claps, perhaps more excited than the day he managed to do the 900 (a risky 2½-rev aerial spin) for the first time in skateboarding history at the 1999 X Games after ten unsuccessful attempts.
In that little big step from Kadence there is a lesson for each of us. Because, although we have gone through similar situations hundreds of times, every time we are faced with an unknown project, a challenge that looks capital letters or a problem that apparently has no solution, we feel fear again, we freeze and do not jump. But the feat that we observe in the video reminds us that the only way to know what is at the end of a new day, of a complex project or of that entrepreneurial idea in which no one else believes, is to arm ourselves with courage and like the little girl Kadence Klover Hawk, equipped with helmet and knee pads, just jump into the void.