Ask the questions you’re afraid to ask

Earlier this year (2023), my flatmate was leaving for a new job in a different city. He had a motorcycle that he wanted to sell because he wouldn’t be needing it there. He casually mentioned it to me and I instantly thought “What if I buy it?”.

Usually, when I have such questions or thoughts, I keep them to myself. No need to let the world in on my stupid thoughts. But for some reason, I blurted it out. To which he ecstatically replied, “That would be perfect!”. Buying a second-hand product is always tricky. You don’t really know the product or the person selling it and there are n number of things that could go wrong. This wasn’t the case here. I knew both the person selling it and the quality of the product (which was good). The only problem - I didn’t know how to ride a bike.

I and bikes go long back. I remember as a little kid, I’d sit on the tank of my father’s bike holding the handles of the rearview mirrors, and imagining myself riding the bike. The wind in my hair, the eventual water in my eyes, and the desire to go just a little further made the experience so wonderful for me. But as I moved into my teenage years and my father got older, the bike at our home got replaced with a scooter (the reliable Honda Activa) leaving me with virtually no access to a bike and in turn learning how to drive one.

The reason I gave above was the one I kept giving myself. That the only reason I haven’t learned how to drive a bike is due to not having access to one. Almost as if trying to justify my position with a logical reason to hide the actual reason which was my fear of riding one.

I would ride a bike every now or then but I knew that I didn’t really feel comfortable with them. A fact that I was reluctant to admit especially with my friends. In 2019, on Diwali eve, my friend gave me his bike to ride as he had to talk to someone on the phone and we needed to get going. A few hundred meters into the ride, I slammed the brakes hard, crashed the bike on an empty road, and ended up with a broken nose and a torn upper lip. Fortunately, nothing happened to my friend.

2019. That was the last time I rode a bike until last month, June 2023. So I guess you now somewhat understand why I didn’t want to ask the question “What if I buy it?” to my friend. That’s the thing with questions that challenge us. The ones that we’re afraid to ask and often the ones we need to ask ourselves. It feels uncomfortable to take them on and explore them further. We normally just bury them in the maze of our other thoughts and distractions that provide us instant relief from the uncertainty and the pain that such questions may cause.

Maybe it’s the entrepreneurial spirit that I’ve acquired these days or maybe it’s something else but something clicked inside me at that moment which made me not ignore this question. I blurted it out and it triggered a chain of events that wouldn’t have happened had I not said that question out loud.

I bought the bike from my friend, practiced riding it in my apartment’s basement for a few days, and then finally hit the road with it. The first few days on the road were very uncomfortable. But I stuck around. I had taken a decision and there was no going back from it.

Fast forward a month - riding that bike has become a thoroughly enjoyable experience for me. It’s my daily commute to the co-working space I work out of. I’ve also now started going to relatively far-off places in Bangalore from my apartment more often. It’s like I have now added a new degree of freedom to my lifestyle.

I’ll leave you with this quote from the book “Letters to a Young Poet” that I recently read.

We have no reason to be mistrustful towards our world, for it is not against us. If it holds terrors they are our terrors, if it has its abysses these abysses belong to us, if there are dangers then we must try to love them. And if we only organize our life according to the principle which teaches us always to hold to what is difficult, then what still appears most foreign will become our most intimate and most reliable experience. How can we forget those ancient myths found at the beginnings of all peoples? The myths about the dragons who at the last moment turn into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses, only waiting for the day when they will see us handsome and brave? Perhaps everything terrifying is deep down a helpless thing that needs our help.