The Art of Staying Upright
Reflections on riding solo—once you learn, you never forget.
When I was 10 years old, I taught myself how to ride a bike. I had been asking for years for someone to show me how, but the moment never seemed to arrive for one reason or another. I found myself trapped in a kind of prepubescent no mans land, way too old for stabilisers but unprepared for balancing on two wheels. Not such a little girl anymore but not yet initiated into independence like the others.
Tired of feeling ashamed and left behind as others glided freely, I decided I was going to find a way to do it myself. I may have been little, but I was clever and determined to succeed. I had seen on TV that other kids learned with their parents holding them steady on the bike until they were ready to be set free and ride alone—to find their own way, to find their balance.
So I figured if I could just find a way to keep myself stable with the tools I had at my disposal, maybe that would be enough to take off.
I went outside to the garden and found two rusty wheelbarrows. I placed them side by side, leaving enough space to balance the back wheel of the pink bike between the two handles. I remember the bike was my sister's and seemed way too big for me. I wore blue pedal-pusher pants and a t-shirt with blue checked sleeves, adorned with a patch that said “Country Girl,” though we lived in the suburbs of Limerick. The sky was grey and full of clouds, but it must have been summer if the weather allowed for such an outfit in Ireland.
I positioned my bike and mounted it, trembling slightly with both fear and excitement. I knew it would work. All I had to do was find my balance to take off, and from there, all I needed to do was keep moving.
I rested the left pedal against my shin, placed my right foot on the right pedal, and put my hands on the handlebars. I looked straight ahead at the grey, pebble-dashed wall, took a deep breath and counted down: 5-4-3-2-1, LIFTOFF! The wall in front of me suddenly flipped on its side, and I found myself on the ground with the bike on top of me.
My heart was pounding in my chest, and my legs were shaking more than before. But I don't remember feeling afraid. That's the thing about fear and excitement—they are so closely linked. I might fall again, but I had already fallen. What's the worst that could happen? I knew I could do this! I immediately brought the bike back to its position, holding the handlebars steady while keeping the same position in my feet because that had seemed to work for a second before my hands got all wobbly.
Aaaaaand 5-4-3-2-1, GOOOOOOOO! This time, I managed what must have been almost a full wheel rotation before I got scared, lost my balance, and had to drop my left foot to catch myself. But I didn’t fall this time. This time, I learned.
Recently, I told my therapist about the blessing and curse of being a woman; it’s a magical experience to feel so deeply, but I often feel emotionally unstable. He, the ever-optimistic yet compassionately honest one who consistently reminds me of my triumphs over losses, looked at me, smiled, and said, “Yes, you are a bit unstable. But you are unstable in the way that a bicycle is unstable. It may not be steady, but you keep moving forward.”
Ok! Third time's a charm. I can do this!
I brought the bike back to position. Arms steady, left foot on the ground, left pedal balanced, right foot on the pedal. Breeeeeaathe. I pushed myself off and started pedalling, and to my surprise, I kept pedalling. Once my body felt that balance, I was no longer afraid. I just kept moving forward and began steering around the garden. Before I even realised what was happening, I was doing laps around the shed. Floods of excitement rushed through my veins as I cycled faster and faster with each lap. I DID IT!!!! I did it myself! And now I would be free to glide on the roads with the others.
I will always remember that day so vividly. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the first time I began to feel like I really had some say in my life, as though I had some control; I could overcome setbacks and become free.
The other night, I had a dream I was on a bicycle. The scene was painted with yellow and fuchsia tones, and while the atmosphere felt playful and adventurous like the Tarot Fool, I also felt like the stakes were high. Something important was happening, though it seemed fairly trivial. There was a circle in front of me and a group of people staring out. They seemed to be signalling to me that I needed to come inside; it felt almost like a circus, with various games inside. I cycled toward them, but I was stopped by the small wooden fence that bordered the circle. The people on the other side didn’t talk; instead, their gaze seemed to be telepathically encouraging, as if to say, “There’s a solution; you know there is.”
Confused by the purpose of all this, I cycled up again and crashed against the fence. Ross Gellar from Friends was inside, wearing a brown suede jacket and no pants. He seemed rather defeated, just like he did in the one where he buys leather pants and ends up having a lotion mishap that abruptly ends his date—and his adventurous streak. Friends fans will know.
I cycled to the fence again, realising I needed to move faster. I had to use the momentum I had to get to the other side. At the moment where it felt like I wanted to stop because I was afraid of crashing again, I realised this was precisely the moment I needed to push past that fear. I had to go against that instinct and speed up when I wanted to stop.
I made it to the other side and saw my friend's child waving at me, smiling as he was about to go down the slide. He stopped, slightly hesitant, and looked to me for encouragement. “Problems are a feature, not a bug,” I said as I clapped and gestured for him to slide down.
“Problems are a feature, not a bug.” It seemed a strange thing to say to a child, but he understood. Upon waking and writing this all down, I understood what my unconscious was trying to tell me: that life is like this by design. The issues are built into the game; they are a part of it. Without setbacks, you never learn, you don't grow. We know this intuitively already, of course, and Jesus, is it annoying when someone says this to you when you are in the thick of it? But there comes a point where you have to accept this truth.
That's the thing about dreams: when you can unpack the unique symbolism, you can see that your inner reality is trying to teach you something important, just as our outer reality does.
The fact that I was on a bike in my dream was very telling, considering how much it meant to me as a child to have achieved that myself.
Life is full of enormous, seemingly insurmountable challenges. When we or those around us are suffering, it can feel like life is happening to us rather than for us. It can feel like the odds, or rather the gods, are against us. It's one thing to fall off your bike as a child; it's another when you’re an adult and you lose someone you love, or a family member suddenly falls ill. But human beings, like every living creature, need to adapt to evolve, and the only way we can do that is by facing challenges. We can either wave our fists at the sky, cursing the gods, or we can take a look around and see what tools we have available. If there is a problem, which there always will be, there has to be a solution, even if sometimes the solution is just accepting reality as it is.
But how do we face those challenges when everything feels so unstable, when we are scared to move from where we are now to where we need to go? How do we know what the next move is when it feels like we are all alone? The bicycle serves as a fitting metaphor—unstable, yet exciting—and you have to keep moving forward in whatever way you can. Life waits for no one, so the best we can do is find our centre, find the balance of opposing forces, and trust that we can keep moving forward even when we feel alone. To me, balance is feeling when there is a time for action and when there is a time to be patient. It's not forcing but finding your will and determination while moving in harmony with your surroundings, with the tools you have available, and doing the best you can.
The human spirit is incredibly resilient. You will lose your balance, you will get hurt, and you may end up with scars that tell your story. Falling is inevitable, but what matters is how you handle those falls and, more importantly, how you get back up. Each time life throws you off balance, it’s like wobbling on a bike—you learn to adjust and find your footing again. When you face enough challenges, you start to remember how to steady yourself, reclaim your balance, and keep moving forward, using each setback as a lesson to navigate the next stretch of road. And as you do so, try to stay connected to that playful, childlike sense of wonder.
It's the kind of wisdom that is hard-earned through lived, embodied experience. And once you learn to find your centre amidst life's whirlwinds of woe, it’s like riding a bike: once you’ve got it, you never forget.