I’ve heard people use the term “new normal” when they’re describing the evolving stages of their lives that are different now than the normal they remember. And now that I’m in my 72nd year, I’m trying to practice the art of graceful acceptance with those inevitable changes that are in contrast with the way I remember myself to be. It seemed like only yesterday that I was riding my bike around the park with Marcel on the handlebars in his carrier, peddling tirelessly while we felt the fresh air on our faces, and just drinking in the beauty of nature around us. But in reality, that yesterday was a few years ago and my bike had been in storage all that time. When I was finally able to unpack it and get it road-ready again, the old normal was not catching up.
My agility was not in the same state as it was before and Marcel and I had both put on a few pounds since the last time we took to the road with unfettered joy. Maintaining enough balance to choreograph anything resembling a bike ride was going to require some modifications. After several weeks of tinkering with my bike to get it to perform within my current capabilities, it was obvious that the only way we would ever get close to anything like a bike ride again would be to figure out a way to do it within our new normal.
It was a bitter pill to swallow but I finally got it down. The only way I could be certain that we can both be on the bike without toppling over was by adding …. training wheels.
How ridiculous, right? And even though I knew it was the only solution if I ever wanted to ride my bike with Marcel onboard again, all I could think about was how silly that would look. I couldn’t even imagine what the neighbors would think or how it would look to other people. So I turned to AI to find out. I put in a prompt describing how I expected we would look and got this image…
… and even though it made me laugh, it just isn’t the reflection I wanted to see. So I I did another one with a description that had a little more attitude and got this back …
This me laugh too but, somehow, I felt better about the extra wheels on this one.
So I got the training wheels mounted and took Marcel out for a bike ride. At least, for him, it was a ride. I’m still having trouble just peddling again after that long timeout so, for the most part, I’m just walking the bike around the parking lot with him in the basket. I wonder what kind of a caricature AI would conjure up with a description like that.
And then a verse from an old poem came to mind…
“Oh, would some Power the gift give us,
To see ourselves as others see us!…” *
… and that brought me one more attitude adjustment. Who cares how it looks?!? All I know is that even if I’m just pushing him around in the parking lot, when this little guy is in his handlebar carrier, the unfettered joy returns. He thinks we’re out for a bike ride! And his opinion is the only one that really matters. Happy New Normal!
Survive and Thrive can be found at They Might Be Angels.com
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns
