Years ago I visited a friend of mine in a European metropolitan city. The city had an underground metro which I was not used to riding having been born and raised in cities which did not have a metro at the time. My friend laughed as he saw me struggle to keep balance as we stood in a busy metro car with all the seats taken. I was holding on to the rails “for dear life,” because I was not used to being tossed around while otherwise standing still.
My friend watched me and laughed as he stood on his own two feet without holding on to anything, seemingly not being offset at all by the rapidly moving and bouncing metro. “Let go of the rails,” he said. I looked at him like he was crazy to suggest the very thing that was keeping me standing upright as opposed to landing on my butt on the floor of the moving metro car.
“It’s like riding a wave,” he said, “it’s fun, let go.”
As I reflected on the potential embarrassing outcome and the inevitable bursts of laughter and sneers of the Europeans literally looking down on me as I would be sprawled on the floor, I thought it was too soon to let go. But nonetheless, at the insistence of my friend to “live a little,” I let go.
Letting go and trying to “ride the wave,” or just remain standing upright, was not that risky with the railing remaining where it was, there for me to grab it at the slightest hint of “tilting.” So in retrospect, it wasn’t too early to let go since I could, and did, have the luxury of grabbing the rail any time I needed it. In fact, it was the perfect time for me to learn because a couple more days later, and after some funny metro rides, we ended up in a metro car during high traffic time, and not only no seats but no nearby rail.
My friends “game” of “riding the waves,” not only ended up being fun, but ended up coming in handy as I comfortably rode the metro waves all the way safely and upright to our final destination.
Fast forward a decade or so later this same friend posed an interesting question to me. This friend is going through some rocky times and is having a hard time making sense of his thoughts, his relationships, his career and many other sectors of his life. Having known him all these years I brought two things to his attention.
The first thing is that the way he is thinking, feeling, and going about doing his life is vastly different than the way he has been thinking, feeling and going about doing his life for the past few decades that I have known him. In a sense he has completely reinvented himself. In keeping with many of the philosophies of the day, he is much more “conscious” of his every action and their effect on himself and the world. That alone can turn one’s whole being upside down.
The way he thinks about things today, some of which no longer have a foundation in the ways he was taught to think about, believe or understand. Metaphorically, it’s as if the legs have been knocked out from under his table.
Decidedly, my friend is on shaky ground. For all we know the ground may have been shaky all along, but my friend was used to holding on to “rails.” The time has come in his life to let go of his “rails,” and “ride the waves,” until such time as he could stand on his own two feet again and the twists and turns and bouncing and stops and starts of the metro train of life not affect him.
Though it was fun and perfect to be able to remind my friend that it was he who encouraged me to “let go of the rails,” literally, on the metro in Europe, it was much more important to remind him of something else he said. What he said was, “it’s fun. Let go.”
Though being tossed around in a busy metro with strangers and foreigners and risking loosing one’s equilibrium and falling on the floor of the metro car could be considered “dangerous,” in the mind of a younger man, an adventurer, or an “enlightened one,” it can be considered fun. In the end, if needing to have the skill of being able to stand on one’s own two feet without falling is something of a necessity, as in during traffic hours, then on the way to learning the skill, would we learn better, quicker and enjoy the “ride” more if we consider it fun rather than scary?
And so I reminded my friend, that on this metro ride we call life, the more we remind each other that certain experiences can be fun especially while we still have some rails we can rely on and hold on to, the better off we will be when we come upon situations that require such skills as being able to stand on bumpy rides, or when and if the rails we have relied upon to be able to stand upright were to be out of reach or completely disappear.