There is nothing more basic on cycling than riding the bicycle. In other words, you can’t ride a bicycle except by riding one.
That seems idiotically tautological but that’s how simple life rules are. You can’t live your life if you do not know how to live it. You can’t enjoy unless you are able to enjoy, you can’t solve problems unless you are trained to do so by accepting responsibility for them and you can’t lift a heavy load unless you have a lever and know how to use it.
The lever is one of the most basic forms of a machine, used to increase force. Levers help us lift loads with less effort.
If we study the Laws of physics, life becomes less complicated because what applies to nature applies to us too, as we are part of it.
So there is one basic maintenance lesson that comes after being able to ride the bicycle and that is the ability to fix a flat tire. No one is excluded because we all know that one day or another we would have a flat tire. We did not wait for the storm to come, we trained to do so while it was sunny in our garden and I remember trying quite a few times to place the lever at the exact position where it could lift the load of the car before doing it almost automatically. I needed to practice.
So when crisis unleashes, you place the lever according to the force that pushes you strong. You have to calculate the force, the load force, the effort force and the distance from the effort force and act accordingly.
If you use the lever correctly, you can lift any load and that is how you find out that it is never the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it. There lies the answer to the question why some people fall apart when pressure is strong and others cope with it and manage to hang on.
Everyone experiences a flat tire, but with the help of the lever, some manage to change it and keep moving forward. Even in huge catastrophes like wars or natural disasters some will grieve the loss but will build everything from scratch emotionally and physically while others will continue to live as dead.
So everything is about the way we carry our load and I will tell you how I carry mine in the middle of a crisis and what I do.
When it happens, I give time to myself to recover. To evaluate the losses, to adjust, to process the feelings, to be present. I do not avoid the negative feelings, I try to overcome them. I stay in touch but I do not enter the downward spiral of sadness and suffering. I try to experience the pain but shift to the positive after having processed it. There is always a center of thought, an approach of positivity and a conscious choice of wanting to keep walking and not letting situations defeat me or define who I am. If I am still alive and the load hasn’t killed me and for as long as I am alive I have decided to carry the load of my own existence in a happier way.
It’s not about being optimistic and detached from reality it’s about being realistic and seeing the potential, the way out, the responsibility towards myself to move forward.
The point is how we carry ourselves forward and understand that the load IS ALWAYS THERE. Since the day we are born we carry the load of our existence. We carry our selves, our own existence and that never ever stops. So stop thinking of how to get rid of your weight. YOU CAN’T. Just try to carry it in a better way. Think of your physical body. I am carrying every day 50 kilos of body weight and I never give my weight to someone else to carry it for me. I simply can’t because each one of us has ones’ own load to carry. We can’ t get rid of our shadow, can we?
Take a minute to sense your load. …Feel it, realize that there are times when you can’t lift it alone. Share it, talk about it if the level of despair is big. Feel compassion for yourself but not pity. And then increase the resources of the response.
Respond to the situation, don’t react. Accept and act. Believe that you own the perfect machine to lift it and fix it. Be certain that the power is in your hands to act according to the new reality. You are on your own to lift it but not alone to shoulder it. Receive generously the help of others and offer yours when needed. And then you might find out that everything is in the interpretation we give, everything is about perspective. And that we are more powerful than we believe if we have always with us the perfect lever.