Small Decisions

Lead to a Life Well-lived

- Kristin Butcher

SPEND ENOUGH TIME WATCHING Commercials and it’s easy to surmise life’s intended priorities: Look good. Be rich. Smell like Axe.

But outside the small screen, we quickly realize that making our goals fit within a mass of responsibilities, limitations and life’s maddening unpredictability is like assembling a black puzzle in the dark while drunk.

It doesn’t start that way though. Our existence began with simple needs, most of which were taken care of by someone else. We ate, slept and created Rorschach-esque diaper art. That’s about it. We got a little older and the list a little longer. For many of us who still pride ourselves on chainring-shaped  scars, our first non-survival-based ambition began with a bike.

It didn’t matter whether our two-wheeled conveyance for childhood freedom came shiny and new from Grandma on Christmas morning or if it made its way through two older siblings before getting a rattle-can paint job in our third-favorite color.

That bike was ours. And we loved it. We rode it every chance we could, taking it to the store for illicit candy runs and giving handlebar rides to friends for the next few years. We chose riding over Saturday-morning cartoons and doing our chores, even if it meant we’d get in trouble later. That bike introduced us to freedom and the humility of a trick gone bad, and we bawled all night when it was stolen. A new bike eventually came with bigger wheels for our bigger bodies, but it wasn’t the same. It’s never the same.