Learning to Ride: A Bicycle and Life

I learnt riding a bicycle after trying for three long years. I was initially nudged into the practice by my elders who felt that it would be a great exercise for me to lose weight.  However, my practice lacked all the zeal and enthusiasm of an interested learner. I was rather guarded and restrained in my attempts to control the simple machinery.

The first phase of perfunctory effort fizzled out without much or any accomplishment on my part. My father the preferred guide out of the two parents, left no stone unturned to train me. I was taken to the air force runway to make the ride smooth for me. Strong pair of arms of the most trusted and patient orderly pushed my hefty weight on the bicycle many a times. Expert riders who were a little older than me accompanied me at the crack of the dawn, just to motivate me to push the paddle. The whole drama ended with numerous frustrated attempts with the entire bevy of trainers giving up on a disinterested learner that was me. 

The ordeal was re-visited the following year when again my elders decided that I should learn riding a bicycle because it simply had many benefits for a growing-up girl of 9-10 years who was actually growing out of proportion! There was a replay of events of the previous year which again ended in a fiasco for all those who had pinned their hopes on me.

The succeeding year something different happened. My only friend and constant companion had learnt to ride the bicycle and she was no longer available to play with me. Her vivid stories of early morning rides to explore the vast fields within the air force campus, evening races on the abandoned part of the runway or post-dinner night sorties to the hostile camp in search for a stolen ball or frisbee; made me feel deprived and left out of all the fun she was having with the other children.

It was time for me to get down to work. I decided out of my own volition to master the art of riding the bicycle. My earlier enthusiastic and encouraging trainers expressed lack of free time on their hands to guide me on this occasion. I turned to my mother and beseeched her, whose loving heart gave in to my teary-eyed pleas.

I began my practice not on the smooth tarmac of the runway but on the ordinary road outside my home, embellished with numerous pot-holes. My mother a strict and vociferous task-master did not spare me any abrupt turn of the handle while I tried to maintain my precarious balance on the bicycle. Ten-minutes into the first session, I experienced my worst fall of the entire episode of learning to ride a bicycle. The bleeding knee on that day and the stiff one on the following day, did not deter me from practicing. The results were extra-ordinary. I was riding the bicycle on my own within a week.

A mammoth sense of achievement engulfed me and I rode high on the surge of new-found confidence. Perched on my bicycle, I played with the wind. I even won a single-ride and a double-ride race with my former companions. The whole ordeal had also opened my heart to the experience of bliss in solitude. I had learnt some anticipated and some unanticipated but beneficial lessons during the process.

I always draw upon this episode whenever I am faced with a challenging and new task in my life. This is how facing a new challenge or crisis is simply learning to ride the bicycle for all of us:

• ·        Nobody can force me to face and overcome a challenge or crisis till I want out of my free will to do so.
• ·        I learn to overcome and defang the challenge after persistent efforts, paying no heed to small and big falls that I experience in the process.
• ·        Nobody and not even I ever assumed that riding a bicycle was beyond my reach. I mastered the skill and similarly I can master any task that I set my heart, mind, body and soul to.
• ·        I became a better or an expert rider not because I was able to practice on a better road, in better surroundings, with a better trainer or a better piece of equipment. It was all because of my will and determination. In fact the old bicycle became a better ride because of the cyclist riding it.
• ·        So in a challenging or crisis situation, it is for me to step up to the plate rather than pointing fingers at the factors outside me for causing such a situation. The situation is not a problem but just an opportunity for me to grow.
• ·        Till the time I do not accept the challenge and overcome it, the same or similar situation will keep confronting me, forcing me to take action.
• ·        The results of overcoming a challenge are multifarious and multidimensional. I not only garner the apparent benefits but also unravel some concealed advantages which may be exclusively available to me, because of who I am and how I deal with situations in my life.

I can only conclude by saying that every challenge or crisis in life is as easy as learning to ride the bicycle. Every time I am confronted with a challenge, I look for the lesson in it for me to learn, rather than the difficulties in the changed scenario. I simply have to move out of my comfort zone to pleasantly surprise myself and the others. 

It is all about me- always has been and always will be.