1 June, 2016
It’s amazing how such an insignificant moment in life can have such a significant lesson for us all. That is.. if we are open to recognizing said significance!
Now for me to elaborate!
My love affair with Vietnam is no secret. 5 trips there in 5 years clearly shows I have an addiction and I have no issue with this! One of my favourite places in the country is a town called Hoi An. It’s my recharge centre if you will.. even if I am constantly on the move while there! My preferred mode of transport is the trusty but ever so reliable bicycle. Reliable might be a questionable choice of word given my story but stay with me!
One afternoon I was on my way for a fitting appointment for the leather jacket I was having made (The jacket is amazing btw) and I was cycling into the old town when the bicycle seat started having “issues”. By issues I mean it was tilting backwards so much that it was pretty much pointing upwards. Given this angle and given that me being male.. you can generally work out that this was not comfortable.. AT ALL. Anyway, I made it to the tailor and did the fitting and I just figured that I would just adjust the seat when I was about to make my return trip back to the homestay.
Yeah.. no.
Upon trying to adjust the seat to make a more comfortable ride back (mashing your genitals to custard courtesy of a misbehaving bicycle seat is not a holiday thing), the seat snapped right off the clips holding it in place and there was no way I was going to be able to fix it by the side of the road. I thought “No problem, I will call the homestay and get one of the guys there to side by side ride another bike down to me” but when we called the homestay unfortunately they didn’t have anyone available to do this. They suggested catching a taxi back and they will pick up the bike tomorrow.
Now I could have reacted poorly to this inconvenience. I shouldn’t have to pay for a taxi and given this situation had cost me some time already it really was annoying. I could walk back but that would take about 30min and I didn’t want to do that.
I ran through the annoying factors of this situation and then thought – this doesn’t need to be this way. It wasn’t the homestay’s fault the seat broke. It wasn’t their fault that they just didn’t have anyone free to ride a bike down to me at that time. I’m an adult – figure it out.
I had a laugh with the ladies from the tailor shop, popped the bike seat in the basket at the front and set off on my bike ride home – sans seat. Being 6’2 I stand out anyway when in Vietnam but seeing me standing up while riding a bike would have made me stand out even more.. and it did because I got puzzled looks which then turned into smirks because they could see I was missing the seat.
The ride home was a challenge for me. I did 10 seconds of intense peddling and then 10 seconds of gliding along. It got my heart rate up and I was thinking to myself “well I may be on holidays but there is certainly no harm in some impromptu cardio!”
I got back to the homestay and Blossom – the lovely young lady in the reception was baffled how I got home. When I explained that I just rode the bike home without sitting down (because let’s be clear here.. sitting down would have resulted in likely medical attention) her bafflement turned to horror. Blossom spent the next 2 days apologizing to me for this inconvenience and I just kept laughing it off.
There are people out there who would have made this life event into some huge song and dance of horror. The inconvenience would have been unacceptable and it would have likely ruined their day/week/holiday.
You can choose how you tackle a problem. You can kick up a stink and blame other people and get all negative about it OR you can acknowledge the situation and with a glint in your eye – figure it out, solve it and grow from it.
As I explained to Blossom – I made it a challenge to see if I could get all the way home without sitting down. I made it fun. I had a giggle because other people were having a giggle and the situation was a bit amusing. I don’t look back on this situation as an inconvenience. I look back on it and think “I was presented with a problem and I turned it into an opportunity to not add to someone else’s workload (riding down another bike for me) and to have fun with an awkward situation”.
I think Blossom understood eventually that I actually enjoyed the experience. Though I think we both recognized that had this happened to the weird american lady in bungalow 2 – the situation might not have been as jovial.
Life is indeed short.. so it’s vital to make the most of what happens in it.
Jon 😉
Jon is a Metabolic Precision Transformation Specialist working from his Studio EPIC WIN PT in Newmarket, Brisbane. Follow all the fun and adventures by liking the Facebook page here