Life & Therapy

When I was in college, I rode around on a ten-speed that may as well have been a one-speed.  I’d had this bike for years, and never learned how to change gears on it, so whatever gear it had been in when I got it, that was the gear I’d bike around on.  One day, two roommates and I decided to go on a nice big bike ride.  Because they were both boys, I wanted to prove that I was just as tough as them (I had issues), so I was keeping up- until we met a gigantic hill.  The one gear I’d committed to for so long?  It was not the hill-climbing gear.  So, I was huffing and puffing up this hill, and my friend asked, “Can’t you just shift to an easier gear?”  Too embarrassed to admit I didn’t know how, I snapped, “I can’t change my gears, they’re broken!” and I continued to labor, until finally I had to walk my bike up the hill. Eventually, I learned how to shift gears, and I still laugh at just how attached I was to preserving a know-it-all image of myself.  I was so attached, that I was willing to climb an insanely steep hill in the hardest gear, rather than reveal my lack of knowledge.

It can be a vulnerable thing to ask for help and to reveal our weaknesses, blind spots, and ignorance.  Sometimes, we are so afraid of doing so that we might go to great lengths to avoid it.  Saving face gets expensive, and really, what does it do for us?  What did I gain from biking, then walking up this hill?  I ended the ride sore and I still did not know how to change my gears.  If I’d admitted that I didn’t know this, I would have learned how to ride my bicycle the in the way it was meant to be ridden, at the price of two minutes of embarrassment.  The power gained in learning, despite the embarrassment, always outweighs the false sense of power that might come from saving face- and takes us much further on our ride.