Being In The Game

by: Elexis Penner

 

Hubby: “You’re going to wipe out.”

Me: “No, I’m not!!”

Hubby: “Yes you will, everyone does.”

Me: “No I won’t – EVERYONE is not as afraid of pain as I am!! Nobody is!!”

Hubby: “You will forget, and you will fall. It’s only a matter of time – just accept it.”

Me: “No, I won’t accept it – I’ll never forget!!”

 

Twenty-one years of marriage and this is the extent of our communication skills?

 

What’s happening here, is I’m trying to get up the nerve to use clipless pedals on my bike. My husband is trying to help, and my boys are ready with their phones set to video in case I have an AFV moment.

 

Clipless pedals are where you have a special kind of shoe that has a little socket, and your pedal has a little clip that clips right into the shoe. You know – clipless.

 

This locks your shoe to your pedal and it increases your efficiency because you can now use your leg’s upward motion to pull the pedal up as well as push it down. The tricky part is that whenever you come to a stop, you have to remember to take your foot out before you end up with both feet stuck in the pedals, and you and your bike in a screaming free-fall to the ground.

 

This is terrifying to me, because at my age, when I fall – stuff breaks. And as the ancient wisdom of Daffy Duck goes, “I’m not like other people. I can’t stand pain. It hurts me.”

 

So… unlike what I’ve said on pretty much every resume I’ve ever written – I don’t really like learning new things – except, of course for all the times I’ve actually gone out and done it. But much of the time I’ve been afraid of failure, afraid of pain, afraid of screwing up.

 

But every once in a while the not going for it feels worse than the risk to try. I don’t know if that necessarily ranks as courage – but it’s a start.

 

I’ve noticed that there are a lot of great things to learn at my kids’ competitions – and the most important things have nothing to do with winning.

 

At a music festival, I heard the adjudicator quote Beethoven to more than one young performer who’d had memory or fingering flubs, “To play a wrong note is insignificant. To play without passion is inexcusable.”

 

During warm-ups at a baseball game, I heard our coach tell the kids, “Don’t worry about fouling off – there are WAY worse things than striking out. Like not being in the game – you gotta be in the game. “ Or something like that.

 

We tell our kids this, but do WE believe it? Maybe kind of the same way that we tell them that sometimes we all have to eat things we don’t like. “Really, Mom? Do you ever eat things you don’t like?” Just never mind and eat your cream of asparagus.

 

Risks are scary – scarier as we get older. And in many ways that’s a good thing. I mean, it’s probably best that some of us don’t drive or dress the same way we did when we were 16.

 

But for me, it gets easy to swing too far the other way and fear trying anything new, just so I won’t risk experiencing the negative – pain, defeat, the mortification of a stand-still wipeout on your bike at a stop sign.

 

Back to the bike… I did a facebook poll to see if there was anyone, ANYONE out there who had never crashed when they switched to clipping in. There was a report of someone’s child who never had a problem. Other than that, everyone who ever tried it, reported falling – including a graphic photo of someone’s scraped up leg. Ow.

 

So I’m going for it. Not because I won’t fall – I’m pretty sure my fall is yet to come. And it will be spectacular, replete with grisly photos and hashtags like #youshouldseetheotherguy and #thatsgonnaleaveamark

 

But I did my first ride yesterday – even though I was kind of fearful the whole way. And while it wasn’t a raging success (I clipped out in the loose gravel), the point is I got over myself and went for it. And I need to remember this.

 

There are fears to let go of every day – in our relationships, our work, our creativity. Hey, just letting our kids walk out the door is an act of faith.

 

Mostly I’ve tried to avoid letting myself be vulnerable in any area – the goal being to avoid pain. But the fear of pain isn’t always much worse than the actual pain – it either keeps things very small, or it ends badly anyway.

 

Author Brene Brown says, “Vulnerability is not about fear and grief and disappointment. It’s the birthplace of everything we’re hungry for: joy, creativity, faith, love, spirituality. And the whole thing is, there is no innovation and creativity without failure.” There you have it.

 

So, happy trails to us!! There will be scrapes and bruises along the way – but the ride is still worth it.