Just Like Riding a Bike

Remember when you ditched your training wheels? That glorious feeling of accomplishment and freedom?






The bruises, the cuts and tears?






My daughter went through that little rite of passage this weekend.She watched me with shining eyes and a big grin as I loosened the nuts and pulled those two metal brackets off her beloved pink bike with the white plastic basket, almost dancing in place. And then when we went down to the road she took off like a
swan, perfect graceful, she didn't even realize I wasn't holding on to her. For about thirty heady seconds.






Then she did. And with realization came fear.





So she wibbled and wobbled and of course it happened. Down she went. It hurt and there was blood and torn skin and a bit of tears. And now she was scared. She didn’t want that to happen again.





Still she got back on.






Only this time there was no beautiful perfect grace, this time there was hesitation. Caution. Fear. She looked at me instead of the road. Panicked when she began to wobble. The falls came more often now. And so did the tears. It’s hard to watch that as a parent. As a human being.






I kept talking to her, trying different things, but the more she fell, the more scared she got, the slower she went, the slower she went the more she fell. Finally I stopped her and looked at her little tear streaked face, ‘Honey, when you start to feel like you are going to fall, that’s when you need to go faster, okay?’ I got what I call the Willis look, you know the one:



















She wasn’t buying it, but she trusts me, even though she thinks I am crazy sometimes. So she tried it. I could see her knuckles clench on the handlebars as she started to wobble, and her sneakers would start pumping faster… and faster…and sure enough she could stay up longer.. and then longer. The falls didn’t stop and they probably won’t stop completely. Not for a long time, if ever. But she gets it now.






Later that night I was lying in bed, worrying sick about my writing. About the book. About how do I do this? What is the point? Who is going to say what? Who am I kidding? What does it matter, nothing is going to come of it anyway… Maybe I should just forget it. And then it hit me. What I had showed my daughter but forgot myself.






The way to get rid of fear isn’t to slow down. The last thing you want to do is lose momentum, right?






You have to pedal faster, not running away from your fear, but into it. White-knuckled maybe, knowing if you crash at this speed it will hurt a lot more, but if you don’t go for it, really go for it, you’re going to be stuck on those stupid training wheels forever, always wondering what real freedom feels like.






I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to wonder.






I want to know.