I'm sure many of us know how to bike. I learned it when I was 9yo. My aunt bought me a bike (normal bicycle) as a reward for my academic performance that year. My aunt really loves us so she bought a tricycle to my second sister as well.
Anyway, since I didn't know how to bike before, I spent the entire semester vacation in learning. For the first two weeks, I had to ask my aunt or my dad or some adult at home to hold on tight the handle or the seat for me so that I won't fall. But still after two weeks of full time practice, I still didn't know how to bike yet! And the adults had other more important things to do. So they left me alone. I felt flustered. I saw my 2nd sis, she's biking happily on her tricycle. I thought, "Maybe that little wheels behind will help me balance.". Therefore, I commanded her to lend me her bike using my "power" as the eldest in the family. Geez, I was such a bully!
My sister gave me a resentful look and reluctantly my sister got off her bike. I took her bike and rode on it happily. After a few days, I found myself not enjoying my sister's bike anymore. Partly is because I was guilt-ridden and I felt that I was just cheating. I still didn't know how to ride a true bike!
One early morning after waking up, I went straight to take out my new bike, took a deep breath, jumped on the seat and started pedaling. It went well for the first minute, then suddenly I lost my balance and fell. Needless to say, I had a deep wound on one of my knees and a big bruise on the other leg. I got up and went to clean my wound and decided to stay away from the bike for the rest of that day. Two days later, when the wound was not hurting, I went to my bike and this strange thought just popped up. "What do I fear? I've fallen before and though it hurts, it's still not that awful as I thought. Oh heck, I'm going to give it one more try!" The next moment I found myself riding smoothly on the bike and it was even way past the 5 minute limitation. Since then, I went around announcing to everyone that I do know how to ride a bike!
What about swimming? Many people do swim but of course there are still a big proportion of us who do not know how to swim. My mother sent me for swimming lesson when I was 7. I could remember the first few lessons, my coach made me holding a float board or holding at the pool edge and learned the first step of all swimming strokes, which is to have a strong kick in the water. Then he brought me away the pool edge, holding my hands and forced me to put my head down to the pool. I got really nervous as you could have imagined and didn't want to put my head down to the water. We went back and forth and I think I had to give in. But I swallowed a lot of chrolinated water (possibly a mixture of sweat, urine and unknown body fluids)! Yikes! Yes, for the rest of the many lessons, I've been swallowing this disgusting water! Until one day, I found myself kicking easily and my arms crawling on a Freestyle stroke! My coach even signed me up for swimming gala held within the recreational club! Hehe.
These two learning events imprinted my mind for a long while. I could never understood what was the trick behind that made miracle happened to me overnight in picking up these two skills. There is no sports gene running in my family. Everyone in the family knows about it. How is it so that make normal people like you and me pick up these skills for daily recreation? We don't need to be an Olympic trainer to know how to bike and swim. We just have to learn for a few times, experience a few times and gradually we'll be able to pick it up. However, what we experience in the first few times will not be as easy as it sounds. We might have noticed it during towards the 2nd or 3rd lessons and the majority of us will begin to have this fear thought/feeling. Some get so paranoid and stop learning from there. But some proceed further and get it alas.
Well, knowing how to swim or bike doesn't make you a better person. That's really no big deal. Yep, that's true, we can go for another sport or activity. But these are just examples I've experienced personally. There are many things we have yet to acquire and we truly want to learn. And these things don't come easily. We may have to struggle a bit to learn. I guess everything is about the same. The learning process is the same. The emotional feelings and thoughts are similar. We always have some kind of fear while learning. We fear to fall. We fear to swallow water. We fear the pain. We fear of what others view/think about us. We fear to lose. There's so much to fear and in the end, nothing actually fears us but ourselves!
There is nothing wrong in not hurting ourselves. But if we let this "don't want to get hurt" thought haunt us, it will sure prohibit us in learning something. You know what I mean? Sometimes maybe that one fall or that one big gulp of chlorine water do make us learn better. Well, at least it worked for me!
♥ every page of my imagination
