Trial by Fire

One of my new strategies in finding things I love is to just pick up as many new things as possible and test-drive them, hoping that a couple of them will stick. One of them is to become an adept biker.

A lot of times, it’s hard for me to do new things because in the beginning you make lots of mistakes and look foolish. I’m trying not to take myself so seriously that I can’t make mistakes. I want to make mistakes so I can learn more, and laugh at myself for looking stupid.

I’m pretty terrible at biking. I learned to bike sometime last year, and if you put me on a bike path and I could just go straight I would probably not fall. But today I decided to abide by one of my life pillars, “Trial by fire,” and thought it would be a great idea to just jump right into it and bike around downtown. As I was doing this, I knew this was probably a bad idea, but I was riding parallel to some train tracks on the road. The next thing I know, BAM, I’m on the ground. It’s a good thing I can’t really bike fast and I was just coasting, so I just ended up with some scratches and small bruises. I dejectedly biked home, avoiding roads with traffic.

Anyways, this fall was just a good reminder for me to accept making mistakes and looking stupid, but also not to push my limits too early.

from ken

How are you evolving your life? I’d love to hear about it. ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com