A parable on two wheels

Bikes, brakes, and finding the limits of surrender

One of the experiences I’m proudest to have cultivated during the pandemic is that of surrender. As a recovering perfectionist control freak, it’s valuable for me to be in circumstances that are so laughably outside of my control that I can’t even try. I have no choice but to transcend my baseline stress and anxiety and reach a plane of acceptance and even confidence in the midst of uncertainty—a state psychologically healthier people might recognize as their normal life (?). This is what I loved most about learning a new language as an adult, the bone-deep knowledge that I couldn’t do anything but try my best and accept that I would still fail, again and again and again, until my utter surrender to that failure transmuted it into success.

“Success” and “failure” are not words I want to apply to any individual experience of the pandemic, but I recognized a similar upside-down magic at work in High Quarantine. Surrendering to an objectively terrible reality without trying to ignore, deny, or change it—or the feelings it provoked—kept me out of the pit of the despair. (I mean, mostly.) I started to understand what people meant when they talked about fate or destiny or the universe working in mysterious ways. I still don’t, and never will, believe anything is “meant” to happen, but I do believe in the unparalleled power of accepting what is happening, right now.

And yet. As the world creakily rearranges itself into its new shape, I’ve found myself perhaps too eager to surrender to less than ideal circumstances. The universe apparently decided I wasn’t picking up on its more subtle messages about this, so it recently decided to whack me over the head with something I couldn’t miss. My husband Luckez and I are returning, in fits and starts, to Mexico City’s Sunday bike ride, an activity we love but dropped immediately and completely in the pandemic. We knocked the spiderwebs off our bikes and got them tuned up, went once in the fall, stopped again for Omicron, got distracted by the return of Formula 1 to Sunday mornings, and, just a few weeks ago, finally made our second attempt.

It was so hard. We did the easiest and shortest version of our possible routes, along Reforma and up to the Basilica of Guadalupe and back. I’ve been doing some version of this ride for over a decade; I used to do it on the bike share bikes, which are slow by design and can get quite worn out. This time I was riding my red Benotto, a basic mountain bike I bought when I moved back to Mexico City in 2013. It’s the kind of bike a lot of people ride here, nothing special but sturdy and functional in a mostly flat city with a lot of potholes. I met Luckez in large part because I rode my bike to a party and he was into it, and over the course of our relationship he slowly helped me improve the bike, adding gears and city-friendly tires. My bike was heavy and a little too big for me, but it more than did its job, especially after the upgrades. We nicknamed it “the Jeep.”

So I wasn’t expecting to ride like the wind or anything on our second time back. That was never the Jeep’s strong suit. But I wasn’t expecting it to feel like I was riding through sand. Starting up after a stoplight (and there are a lot of stoplights) was particularly hard, and I couldn’t find a comfortable gear that didn’t feel like I was either pedaling with no resistance or pushing hard enough to drag an actual Jeep behind me. I didn’t think I could be that out of shape—between yoga and slow running, I’ve never been more into exercise in my life—but I thought I must have been terribly out of practice. It was only the second time I’d ridden in years. I’d get better. It’d get easier. I surrendered to the unpleasantness and enjoyed what I could. I kept up the whole way.

When we got home, Luckez lifted up my bike’s back wheel and spun it. On a functioning bike, the wheel would keep spinning until you pulled on the brake. My wheel immediately stopped on its own. It turns out the brake was broken and stuck to the wheel. I’d done the whole ride with one brake on. I’d so completely accepted that my bike would never be the fastest or most comfortable that I didn’t realize that something was actually broken. I surrendered so hard to imperfection—both mine and my bike’s—that it threatened to suck all the joy out of something I love.

Ok, universe. I get it. So I didn’t just fix the Jeep. I bought a new bike, something all the other riders in my life have been telling me to do since long before the pandemic. I had reasons for not doing it: I was used to the Jeep, I didn’t want to worry about a nicer bike being stolen, I didn’t want to spend the money. Above all, I knew I liked bike riding enough that it didn’t matter if my bike wasn’t great. And then, suddenly, it mattered a lot. In my devotion to acceptance (and to being cheap), I’d put a ceiling on how much I could enjoy something that was supposed to be fun—something that I was doing only because it was fun. I refused to change something that was entirely within my power to change, just I could…feel the satisfaction of not changing it? Anyway, I bought this bike, and it’s so much better. 

What challenges could you stand to be a little more accepting of? And what obstacles are you resisting moving out of your own way? Let us know in the comments!