Why do we fall down, Master Wayne? or I am my own Tiger Mother, Michael Caine.

Why do we fall down, Master Wayne?

or

I am my own Tiger Mother, Michael Caine.

by Maggie Fish

Michael Caine on a Soap Box.
The first #YOLO.

I’m going to tell you right now that the icing on the cake is 
MY BIKE WAS STOLEN. 

AWESOME.

I know, you’ve all been there. 

But the filling, flavour, and texture of the cake was-

Being ripped off by some employee at a Bike Shop, are too late to attend your Spin Class you signed up for, you've hit a wall with 
your improv rehearsal, leave early for work only 
to find it over-staffed and sent home.

Worst. Cake. Ever.

It was after all this that I took my new $300 dollar bike off its new HEAVY DUTY BIKE LOCK on it’s first and last ride.

I had bought it to replace the one that got stolen- and soon after realized I can’t afford a $300 bike.

So, Maiden and Titanic voyage, commence.

There’s something about doing  an activity so innocent and childlike as a bike ride, that it seems to clear your thoughts. Even more so than my usual runs, because with a bike, if you suddenly decide to slow down, you don’t find yourself hating yourself for it. And as I realized how weird it felt to be simply enjoying a light activity, I had an equal realization.

We are wayyy to hard on ourselves.

Now, I have always been one for give your all no matter what, every inch of you is what the pavement deserves, it’s not fair to your team to hold back (in this sequence, my mind sounds like my high school basketball coach) but there is something that we are never taught.

100% effort never equates to 100% success.

Human beings are wired to fail. We can’t see in more directions than one at a time, we have horrible eyesight, we can’t stop watching LOST after we see one episode, no matter how confused/frustrated we get.

But no one prepares you for failing! Our parents, teachers, coaches... they prepare you to prepare. That’s really what we’re taught. How to properly train yourself to prepare.

I would spend hours a day shooting hoops, hoping that when the time came in that final quarter of the regional final, I would be able to make that three-pointer.

But my coach never pulled me aside to tell me, “But just in case you don’t make it, you should walk off the court anyways with your head held hight...”

Maybe in the back of their heads, they think it, but they never say it out loud.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we fall. 

Not because we cannot see in two directions or because we can’t see at all or because we’re on season 4 and still can’t answer a single question.

It is because the best teachers in life know that it is no use to tell someone how to recover when they slip up- that is something only we can learn from doing it ourselves.

So friends, fail. Fail hard. Fail miserably, and be proud to do so.

Because no matter how bad you have it at that moment right when you trip up, there are millions of other people on this planet who are feeling the exact same way you are. Who are themselves trying to find the pieces to put back together what they call  back to “normal”, who are all asking themselves why they were never taught how to come back from this.

We have to stop trying to be perfect all the time, because we’re not. The more we act like students, open to learning and relearning and willing to try anything, the less we will see ourselves as failures, and more just people “under construction.”

So, my bike ride ended, and I locked it up with a heavy duty bike lock.

And I thought to myself, “If my bike had never gotten stolen, I would have never have known that I needed a HEAVY DUTY bike lock.”

And that is why we fail, Master Wayne. 

So we can learn to pick ourselves back up, 

 ...and buy the right fucking bike lock.

Michael Caine would be proud of us...