Life can be cold and hard, a forbidding arena. Often lonely, sometimes we put ourselves under pressure in the midst of a seemingly faceless crowd, full of expectations, real and imagined. You brought us here, show us what you got. Pining for the pedestal, sometimes we feel like we might hit the floor, crack up, fall in over our heads and drown in the dark depths of icy water, our hand reaching out feebly for someone to pull us back up, but no one is there. On thin ice we wobble, trying so hard to stand up, let alone learn how to walk, run, glide or even soar. We wish we could fly but all we can manage is one tentative leap or twirl at a time. Sometimes we skate around the edges of the arena, building up speed, planning and preparing for our next move. Other times we're in the center, naked and exposed to the elements and the fickle whims of the unruly crowd. Or it seems like we're spinning, spinning, dizzying until we fall down in front of everyone, disgraced in front of the unforgiving world. Trying to focus when every face is a blur, every motion leading to another tentative motion, each one full of the never-ending promises of grace and disgrace. Thrown for a loop just when everything was coming up roses and turning to gold. A sustained Herculean, Olympic effort leads to a free fall that isn't free at all. We’ve been doing this for years, ever since we were children; can't we get it right?

But if we made it every time, maybe we'd forget to reach back to lead the next one forward. We work alone and together, practicing our routines every day, helping each other, lending a hand, lifting each other up. Life is a grand symbiosis, full of acrobatics, thrills and spills. Work and play, sustained effort leading to a long, smooth glide, only to require more work. We hold each other's hands, pulling along behind, leading and following, lifting and lifted, one depending on the other, an ongoing performance of give and take, live and love, do and die. When the crowd is behind us, in front of us, with us, pulling for us, it makes all the difference. When we want each other to succeed it makes it that much easier, knowing that they'll groan if we fall, they'll share in our disappointment, wanting to see us get up, hopes and expectation to rise to the occasion and dazzle them with the everlasting brilliance they know we can show them, to blow them away in amazement at everything we can do. To be more than we can be.

Sometimes we throw each other out into the void, to fly and be free to fall or land safely on our own. Sometimes we lift each other up into the air, look at you fly, the wings beyond my wind. Sometimes we spin each other around, centrifugal force trying to fling us away, but anchored by the other, letting us go without letting go. Sometimes we skate in tandem, separately but together, mirroring the motions of our other selves, safety in similarity, duality more glorious than the lonely only. Unique but similar, not quite separate but eternally equal. Then we play, forever flirting, a game of teasing and pleasing, reach out and pull back, give and take, for every push a pull, for every lift a let down, for every fall a rising up, for every throw a catch, even if it's the ground. Holding on to every moment as if it were ours to savor forever, but each precious second passes, gone for eternity, to live on only in our minds as a ghost of itself, to remind us of the past so we can reach out towards our mutual future.

Gravity and the forces of nature help us too, working with us every step of the day. Biology, chemistry, physics, psychology, entropy, empathy, agony and ecstasy, the laws of nature holding court inside us as they do in every docket of the universe, our being one with the forces of existence. Muscles and sinews burning calories to make work, work that builds, sweats, races, heart pumping platelets through blood at the thrill of the chase, the race, the frenzied dance of flashing skates on frigid ice. Proteins building chains that free the elements of life to work their organized magic, haphazard order out of constant chaos, cells living, dying, dividing and multiplying in a never ending process of construction and destruction, atoms and molecules floating in space like miniscule building blocks in a sea of everything out of nothing. And we, no bigger than an atom in the size of it all, only want to find our place, to fulfill our job as a piece of the cosmic jigsaw puzzle, filling in a gap that would be as big as the sun if we were missing. Because without us the universe is incomplete.

Maybe some things that have happened this year are signs for us to see or miss on our road to happy and unhappy destiny. Like the fact that an underdog won the women's gold medal in the Olympics, just like the New England Patriots won the Super Bowl. Does that signify that's what being a true patriot is all about? To pull for the underdog, to hope that everyone gets a chance to be in the spotlight, even if it's only once? Practice never makes perfect, but reaching for that ever-elusive goal gets us as close as we'll never be. And trying to do it alone is useless. For in the sharing, the pairing lies the grace and meaning of life. A single hand outstretched holds the promise of all the wonders of the universe, saying come with me, let me show you what we can do.

They try to judge us, but we know that's only someone else's opinion. Why do we care what they think? Their fickle praise or condemnation doesn't change who we are and what we've done. In the end it is meaningless. The time and work we've put into all this and what we've learned as the results of our accomplishment, no matter how imperfect, are our reward. And then we move on, because it is someone else's turn to share the spotlight.  But it is always ours, when we help or wish them well.