Shift Happens

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving” -Albert Einstein- Saturday morning I bust a spoke riding from the studio to the gym, and walk the last half-mile to avoid any undue pressure on the wheel. I decide to stop for lunch pre-workout. I’d planned to take Emmy to the shop that day anyhow—clean up her gears, check my right front break, which seemed loose. I had a bike ride date the next day with a guy I’d been seeing for a few weeks. I felt there was a good connection with him, and yet I felt him holding back, taking things slow. I was okay with that. I was excited to see him and felt like it might be the beginning of something good. I’m halfway through a Fuji apple turkey salad at Panera Bread when he calls and dumps me. “Bad timing,” he says. He quotes a Wilco song I don’t know and says goodbye. I cry most of the walk to the bike shop and wonder how I didn’t see it coming. Mary at Boulevard Bikes says they are busy with flats, but it should be done by six, and I inwardly thank god because the next day is Easter, all my regular Pilates classes are cancelled, and I feel a desperate need for a long ride. Mary calls me back an hour later. “Bad news. Your gear wheel is shot. Have you been riding in the same gear all winter?” Uh. Yeah. Got comfortable. Sure it was harder to start pedaling, but then I had all the power I wanted, and with my chain and gears being so dirty I’d been avoiding shifting. “Well I’m afraid with how busy we are we might not be able to get this done til Monday.” I beg. I tell Mary I got dumped two hours ago. Please. I need my bike. And Mary, bless her, stays until six-thirty getting her fixed. When I come in she grabs my old gear and shows it to me, like how the dentist shows you pictures of gum disease to keep you flossing. Three or four teeth are broken off the gear. “See? What that does, all that pressure, staying in one gear? You have to switch gears more.” I nod, and promise to do so, and I think about when I shift gears sometimes the chain can slip, and there is a moment of instability where my heart catches. I have a bias against change. I know if I am perfectly honest there have been some amazing changes in my life that I am very happy with. I shifted careers at thirty, changed my body at thirty-five. But there are different kinds of change. There is the change you make happen—and sometimes that’s hard enough, scary enough. There are changes that happen when we aren’t looking (hello aging!), and the ones we plan for. But then there are the changes that we don’t control, ones that are foisted upon us. Those are the hardest of all. Illness, job loss, a death, the end of a relationship. It’s those that try to convince me I hate change. In the last two months, I think I’ve hit every category of change. I’m still struggling with a few of them. My 78 year-old dad taking my 80 year-old mother back to court to stop paying her alimony. A shakeup at the workplace that will fundamentally affect my job in the next year. I have been managing a constant sensation akin to that moment when I shift gears, and the chain rattles and I feel I might be in trouble. Of course, when it comes to bicycling, at any moment I might also have a flat, or get hit by a car, or another cyclist. The fact is, as Helen Keller said: "Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature… Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure." Still, we tend to cling to things that feel safe, sometimes to the point of doing more harm. We find a gear in diet foods, in workout regimes, in depression, in overeating. Sometimes we stay in relationships that aren’t working, or avoid relationships altogether. Or, worst of all, we see a change coming and are immobilized, fearing any choice we make will be worse than the one we get stuck with; we feel so powerless we don’t believe we have a choice. Experts say that when we cannot choose the action, we can at least choose the response. I’d modify that to “a” response, because I know sometimes we have multiple responses, and for a while more of them might be reactions rather than active choices. Like this morning, I knew I needed to go to the gym. And still, I felt like my heart, mind and feet were filled with lead shot. It took me forever to get out the door, only to realize as soon as I exited the house that I’d left my gym lock. I went back in and got it and rode off, only to remember halfway there that I’d left my headphones at home. A voice in my head said, “Just go back.” A large part of me wanted to be completely inactive, to allow depression to be the comfortable gear. I could just ride nowhere. But instead, I negotiated. A half hour. I told myself. Just do a half hour of cardio. And I did 45 minutes, and some Pilates. And I even bought another salad at Panera (no cheese, no nuts). And I feel better now because I can look back and see that I made that happen, I made those choices. And even though there are some dark moments, the more I make choices that are good for me, the more certain I am that I can make more. It doesn’t change the fact that fundamental shakeups are going to keep coming in life, and I still don’t have to like them. But I can continue to choose to shift gears willingly, so that when that chain does slip, I’m ever so much better prepared to right myself.