Goodbye Training Wheels

Sometimes cliches are all you have to express what is going on around you. You might make modifications, applying them to different situations, but it seems that anything worth saying has already been said, and we're just slowly discovering the truth in those things. A lot of it is also nonsense to us. Even this is nonsense to some, but maybe not to others.

The training wheels are a nice, broad metaphor, and I'm using them now as a way to frame my mind as I enter the Peace Corps. They conjure images of childhood, or at least as far as we think riding a bike is a universal human endeavor. (I imagine the phrase 'its as easy as riding a bike' may not register in some cultures. What's a bike? That's nonsense.). Riding a bike is relatively easy. Most people pick it up in a few months, granted they already have some basic balance and motor skills. But thinking back on it, you realize that there might have been many times when riding a bike was scary. If I were to quantify my cycling experience in terms of bruises, cuts, and road rash, I'd even say it was highly foolish to learn such a ridiculous way to move around.

When I was little, I had a little black bicycle. It had training wheels. I would tool around a neighboring cul de sac by Berry Avenue (where many years later I'd meet an unexpected new friend), basically just seeing what I could do on this sweet new ride of mine. At some point I became overconfident. I accelerated too much and became paralyzed by the blinding speed I achieved on my little black bicycle. Something was wrong. I forgot how to brake and how to steer. I was out of control, heading off the road at Ludicrous Speed. I suddenly embodied the mass of all of the titanic careening toward an iceberg. Blinded by whatever fear now seizing me, I might as well have been about to plummet down a cliff into a extravagant explosion. In this case, my iceberg actually turned out to be my neighbor's (evidently beloved) bushes. After lodging my bicycle in her prized plants, my paralysis gave way to a fit of sobbing and confusion. How did I get here? Why is that lady yelling at me to get out of her bushes? Even today I experience tinges of retrospective shame, but also a lingering anger at this woman. Why the hell are your bushes more important than me? I'm the most important thing—don't you know that?

After the well of tears ran dry and I could finally assess the situation, I saw (not surprisingly to you) that I sustained minimal injury. I might have shown my parents a bit of a scrape, exaggerating the whole event in order to get as much sympathy and validation as I could squeeze out of them. "Did your bicycle suddenly grow jet engines, Paul? We just don't see how you could've reached Mach speed so effortlessly." "Did you get attacked by a butterfly?" I probably got too much of what I wanted, but I like to pretend they teased me a little. I'd probably laugh at myself, too.

Among the long list of mishaps that has befallen me, this was probably the least physically impactful. Yet it still stands out in my memory, offering some fun little insights into my own mind. It reminds me that the disparity between fear and the actual blow is as big as you make it. As a child you don't really have any refined mechanism to direct this, to assess risk or to make rational sense of an accident: what causes it and how to avoid/minimize it. All of this is gained from experience and reflection, but I might wager I didn't start thinking about it until my early adult life. It's almost as though the abundance of fear gave way to a complete disrespect for it. I could be pretty reckless on a bike. I remember leaping out into intersections without looking and even crashing into pedestrians because I was riding through walking paths. It was pretty stupid. I was pretty stupid.

But I learned. Luckily. I made it long enough to realize I was neither invincible nor manage fear a little better, and to understand it as it pertains to much more than just cycling. I've also been fortunate to find some pretty spectacular friends who helped me struggle through different aspects of that fear, perhaps even teaching me to enjoy it a little. We've become close enough to offer each other insights and constructive criticisms in a way that would probably be considered a transgression by most, but the results have been uncommonly rewarding. We challenge each other in a way that allows to face mor elusive internal fears. I've never been more aware of my own misdirected intentions, empty words, thoughtless thoughts, and general faults than when I'm engaged in deep conversation with these friends. As hard as that might be to face, I've come to appreciate the naked exposure of my own identity as reflected in their eyes. In a way, we help each other fill in the blind spots of our own perspectives. And with the picture slowly coming into view, the blemishes begin to pale in comparison to the small triumphs and proud moments, and it actually gives me hope for leading a better life. Acknowledge your faults, and move on to better things. You can't photoshop your actions, though we might try to convince ourselves otherwise. Myself included, from time to time.

It's hard to know what we are going to do in any given moment. We might plan our day by the hour, but we can't anticipate what conflicts and challenges will set themselves upon us. You might think of it as fighting or flighting through our entire lives. We enjoy the illusion of control, yet our existence is largely reactive to external things. So the question often plagues me: how do we achieve a sense of control when power is so ephemeral? How do we maintain any trajectory in our lives when any thing can force its way into the many chinks in our armor? I don't want to imagine my life coated in Kevlar—fear is too cumbersome of a burden.

Embrace the fear of change, they might say.

It's yet another cliche that is much easier said than done, but that doesn't make it necessarily useless. The desire to free yourself from such an affliction must be followed by a lot of effort. We become so entrenched in certain ways of being that we might forget how adaptable we are. What you do after the collision or any serious altercation is quite important. There are pieces to dust off and fit back together, but maybe you won't place them the same way. You might give up on some endeavors, finding them fruitless and insipid compared to other things. In short, we find that some things are worth the risk and effort, but you don't really know until you do it. There is often mid-leap hesitation, and I could feasibly fill a tome with all the times I fell into that pit. Giving up sucks, but seeing things through is hard. Too often we wish we could put the training wheels back on and start from the beginning. We might fantasize about traveling back in time to fix those glaring mistakes, yet we know that we need them to move forward. It is the great paradox of wanting both to do something over and make progress in our lives. Mistakes are painful, but we learn more from them than anyone telling us what to do.

So it seems I am caught again in that moment between paralysis and control. The training wheels are indeed off, and my vessel tilts ever so slightly in favor of gravity's pull. But as is true in cycling, you actually have to lean into the fall to save it. What exactly this vessel is, its properties and how to control it, I am still slowly discovering. It's my body and mind, but at times it behaves contrary to the expected. Wish me luck (preferably the good kind) as I continue to remind myself that screwing up isn't so bad.