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It's like learning to ride a bike

It’s a hot summer Texas day. The sun is shining brightly and the sky is the prettiest shade of blue and clouds as fluffy as marshmallows fill the horizon.

And there I am, sitting on the front porch, watching as my dad tries to teach my niece how to ride a bike. She’s so determined to be able to do it alone but she keeps falling over, and at one point runs right into a tree. And we get up frantically to help her every time but she just puts up her arms in the air and says “it’s okay. It’s okay. Otra ves abuelo”. And they reset and restart again. Over and over again. By the end of the afternoon she’s bruised, scraped, and very tired. But even after all that when my brother gets home she’s determined to show him what she’s accomplished. So she mounts up her bike. And proudly screams “I can do it, I can do it” just as she runs right into the fence and gets hurt.

Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing something over and over expecting a different outcome. It’s in our nature to reset and restart. We are determined to prove otherwise time and time again.

Love sometimes seems a series of unfortunate events. We love, we give our all, but we still fail. We get bruised and at times scraped. We bleed and we cry. And with all we lose we can’t help but wonder if after every failure we ever truly recover? Or are parts of our hearts chipped away every time a relationship ends?

When a breakup occurs, especially the ones that leave you with eternal scars you find yourself jaded. Tired, and worn out. At times it might even seem like we’ve lost our ability to love and to be loved. We question how we get back here time and time again. We question if we’ll ever get it right.

But even when it seems like we just can’t seem to catch a break life happens and we are there again. Mounting up. Gearing up. Ready to convince anyone that we are okay. That we can reset and restart once more.

Maybe we do have to lose all our inhibitions. Maybe we do have to lose a bit of our sanity, to mark new pathways and defy all logic. Go against the current and let down all our walls. Put everything on the line to reset and restart once more. For otherwise if we don’t, if we don’t learn to get up each time we fall we will only remain shattered in pieces on the floor. Never whole again.

After a break up we are left at times so delirious that sometimes it takes us a bit to recover from the fall. Our lives might have been going at full speed, but when you run into a brick wall, it has the power to knock the wind and the fight right out of you. We just sit there looking at our lives not quite sure we remember how to get back up. But when the time comes we must wipe ourselves off, shake off the fears, reset and restart. We must mount up and hope that once we are back on it’ll be like riding a bicycle and slowly but surely it will all come back to us. And that in the pursuit of happiness we will always find a will and a way.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Yes, we are to keep on getting up.
May 22, 2010 at 3:48 PM
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