Of riding bikes, living life and getting old.

Dear friend, I know we don’t talk often (heck, I don’t think we even talk at all) but I would like to take this time to thank you. You may not know it but your blog post made everything much clearer for me. And to top it all off, you used a bike as a metaphor – one of my favourite things in the whole world.

You see, I’m turning 26 today. The weeks, nay months, preceding this day were – for lack of a better word – depressing. I have been on and on about the pressures that are mounting against me – a higher paying job, getting married and having a family, finding a better place to live, being a better person, etc. etc. After reading your blog entry, I realized that maybe I was pushing myself to adhere to the pressures of society. Then it hit me – you’re right. We only have one life and there is no formula to living it. Like riding a bike, it is much better to let go and not grip the handlebars too tightly. Why do we like making simple things so hard?

I realized that maybe I’m putting too much importance on what other people say about my life and where they think I should be at this point in my life. Why should I be living my life according to their standards? When everything has been said and done, they won’t be the ones living with my decisions. And so here I am thinking that I need to live my life in the way that I want to, because I don’t want to be old and keep thinking “what if”. I want to look back and say that I did what I could do and that there are no regrets.

And so like riding a bike, instead of listening to people saying this is how you should do it, I should just get on it and go. If we all rode bikes the same way, then life just wouldn’t be interesting. If you just kept riding straight, not going left, right, uphill or downhill, where’s the fun in that? I think I’m just scared of the thought of falling rather than the fall itself. The challenge isn’t that you shouldn’t fall, but rather to get up after the fall.

I’m not good at ending blog posts, but who cares? I just wanted you to know that although we’re not close, you helped me get through one of the hardest bike rides I have ever experienced. So thank you.