
I fell off my bike the other day.
It was three days before my wedding, and I was laughing with a visiting friend as we rode to get some lunch. Distracted, I rode off the sidewalk into the mulch, and time slowed down like it always does when you’re in crisis mode.
I thought, “Oh no, I can’t fall off my bike before my wedding! I might hurt myself and not be able to dance.” Fear took over, and — instead of simply slowing the bike down in the mulch and getting off safely — I overcorrected back onto the sidewalk.
As the bike toppled, I flew forward.
Then I thought, “Oh no, I can’t scrape my face. It will look bad in our wedding photos forever.” And so I did the thing you’re not supposed to do when you fall, and caught myself with my hands. In doing so, I scraped my forearm, hand, and knee, bruised my wrists, and got whiplash from trying to hold my face up off the ground.
I’m fine — more than fine — so this isn’t some cautionary tale about bicycle riding.
It’s more of an allegory.
Had I surrendered more fully to the fall, I might have rolled onto my back. Had I surrendered from the beginning instead of letting my ego run the show, I might not have fallen at all.
I have enough past experience with myself in a crisis to know that a kind of wisdom takes over and performs better than my ego could ever do on its own.
I’ll obviously never know for sure if things would have turned out better if I hadn’t chosen to follow my ego. But I do know that if I could do that moment over again, I’d choose surrender.
Surrender is how magic is made, and in my book, making magic is always worth a shot.

