The whole system that we live in drills into us that we're powerless, that we're weak, that our society is evil, that it's fradulent, and so forth. It's all a big fat lie. We are powerful, beautiful, extraordinary. There is no reason why we cannot understand who we truly are, where we are going. There is no reason why the average individual cannot be fully empowered. We are incredibly powerful beings.
It might have started with a pool cue. When my mother came to visit me in New York, I took her to my favorite dive bar and taught her how to shoot pool. A few years ago, I wouldn't have picked up a pool cue because I was too embarrassed. I knew I wouldn't be any good at it. It's just not my thing. But then I started shooting, and while I wasn't great, I became good enough that I wasn't scared to play with other people. I shoot with other people now, and though it feels so great to win a game, it's just because I play with people who are better than me.
In the past three months, I've discovered the way I like to compete. I want to play against people who are better than me. I want to be good enough that I don't mind taking their critiques. I want to compete with people who, when I miss a tough shot and am clearly unhappy about it, are able to tell me what I did wrong and how I can fix it in the future without making me unhappy. Because I'm not competing with you. I'm competing exclusively with myself.
A few weeks ago, I bought a bicycle. I'm not very strong, I've never been athletic and quite frankly, I have always driven larger cars because I want a strong barrier between myself and every idiot on the road. I fell off of it on my test ride and destroyed my left foot. It's a little older, a little rusty, it doesn't work terribly well, but it gets there eventually. This was the bicycle for me.
I had to get over my fear of falling. The bicycle sat in my car until the next night when I realized I was just going to have to do this. As an adult, I actually forgot how to ride. So I stuck to my neighborhood. I stuck to my street and the streets around it. I found a cul-de-sac and used it to figure out how to turn around. I almost fell again because I thought I was going to hit a car, but instead I turned harder and figured out that I could actually turn like that. I spent a week going on rides that were less than two miles because I was too afraid of hills and had to stick to the flat areas that I wasn't so afraid of.
And then I sucked up my fear and rode with a friend. He's been a cyclist for years and doesn't own a car. We went on my very first four mile ride. It was to lunch and back. It was my first trip where I usually would have taken a car, but instead saved myself money on gas. I thought I was going to die. I met one hill that I couldn't tackle but forced my way up it and nearly fainted when I got to the top. But once you've done it the first time, you have no excuse to not do it again.
I did it again two days later. I decided to ride from home instead of from his house. I flew down a hill faster than ever and tried to turn too hard at the bottom. I got scared, came too close to a curb, and decided that rather than falling into the street, I would give in to it, hit the curb, and just fly. It hurt. I ripped up my leg pretty badly. The only thing I could think of is that I had won. I got over my fear. Falling wasn't as bad as I had remembered it. I got back on the bike and rode the rest of the way. I went from someone who couldn't make it two miles to a cyclist that could go ten without any major issues in less than two weeks.
A couple of weeks ago, I tried the hill that nearly killed me again. It was a challenge, but it was okay. Take it slow. Remember to breathe. It was one in the morning, but I felt safe and comfortable. And a few days later, I rode twenty miles round trip to somewhere I would have had to use gas for otherwise. The me of six months ago wouldn't recognize the me of today if she saw her.
The ending passage of the Zeitgeist movie has a quote that struck me pretty hard when I first heard it. I thought, "Oh my god, that's me. I'm the one making those mistakes." It took me a little while to realize that they weren't really mistakes at all.
I think I spent thirty years of my life trying to become something, I wanted to become good at things. I wanted to become good at tennis, I wanted to become good at school and grades and everything I kind of viewed in that perspective. I'm not okay the way I am, but if I got good at things. I realized I had the game wrong, because the game was to find out what I already was.
I don't take pleasure in things I'm naturally good at. I am uncoordinated. I am all over the place. I can barely throw a baseball. But I became good at darts. I became good at shooting pool. I find things that fascinate me and I do them over and over again until I'm at least mediocre at them. And then? Well, my friends, then I have fun. I don't even have to win at pool every time, because I'm just so happy that I can shoot and not embarrass myself. I taught my mother how to shoot pool. And she's not terribly good at it, and doesn't have my same drive to obsess over new things, so she won't spend hours every week practicing, but who cares? When I was in Kansas City, I got to watch her go out and have fun for a night, and I was able to bring that to her.
So. I totaled my bike a week ago and haven't been able to ride for the past six days. It is slowly killing me. We salvaged the frame and are slowly putting it back together, but here's the point: I totaled my bike. I couldn't drive later that day because sitting in the car, I was afraid of falling. I know that doesn't make any sense, but I was moving forward and I felt out of balance. I was convinced that I could fall. I asked the person driving my car to slow down because I couldn't handle it. I closed my eyes at twenty miles an hour.
Slowly, but surely, I'm working to get it back together. The process keeps getting more involved, but it's going to happen. I'm learning what all the things on the bike do. I get to use this as a learning opportunity. Once it gets back together, I'll have to get over the fear of falling again, but once that's over, I'll be unstoppable. I ripped myself up pretty badly. I told my mother that I'm working as hard as I can to not be pretty. A good friend of mine told me I'm just a different kind of pretty now. I look at the huge, seemingly awful bruises that are covering parts of my body and think about how terrible and scary it was, but I'm not worried. I worked really hard to become mediocre at this, and now I get to have fun with it.
If the game is to find out what I already was, it turns out I was always a person who could just get over things. If this is a game, I really hope I'm winning.
