How I compared riding a stationary bike to living life
So, a couple of days ago I went to the gym and hopped on the stationary bike. Normally when I do this, I set it to hill mode, random hills, I pick my difficulty level, and I keep the RPM over 90. I’m sure it’s no Olympic workout, but I enjoy it, and the random hills mode keeps me interested.
Let’s say the hills are rated at a steepness of 1-10. Well, on this day, the hills immediately jumped up 10, 10, 9, 10, 10. I thought it was broken. I thought I had selected the wrong setting. Every time I set it to random hill mode, it is truly random feeling. Something like 2, 8, 5, 9, 4, 5. Just keep it above 90 RPM I kept telling myself. But for over 60% of my ride that day, it was only giving hills between 8-10. Every time the screen refreshed, I silently hoped it would show me an upcoming 2. Keeping it above 90 RPM was getting harder and harder. Finally, after what seemed like forever, I got some easier hills and finished out there.
The point of this is not the workout. This event really got me thinking, keeping it above 90 RPM in life can be a similar story. At least as we perceive it, other people may have life on easy mode. They may have been getting 1 and 2 level hills throughout life. You may have been getting 9s and 10s since the day you were born. What can you do in this situation? Keep it above 90 RPM. That’s the only thing you can control. You can’t control how steep the current or upcoming hills are, and you can’t control how steep the hills the person next to you is on either. All you can do is keep your pedals above 90 RPM.
Enough about the bike though, as I think my point has made it through. Sometimes life can just be hard. And unfortunately, just because the first half of life was hard, doesn’t mean the second half will be easy. We cannot control that. The only thing we can control is how well we keep on keeping on. The only thing we can control is doing our best at keeping the RPM above 90.
A little bit of a silly story, and silly comparison, yes. It's just a thought I had as I was fighting for my life on a stationary bike.