The Price

This morning I took my son to the library, one of our last chances to get out on a weekday before school starts. We went to a different branch this time, one a little bit farther away but with way more activities. They had this cool wall where you could magnet up all of these PVC pipes in different configurations, and see if you could get a ball to roll through all the pipes. My son dug right in, and in a few minutes two other kids came over to join.

My son is usually shy, and it took him a bit, but before to long he was playing with the other kid his own age. Like that both were off to collaborating on all sorts of different ways to make the pipes work, and I recognized this was one of those times where it was best if I just got out of the way and appreciated the moment.

This is not a post about a nice day watching my son solve puzzles, him becoming more independent, or basking in the glorious joy that parenting can occasionally be.

Nope, it’s about that other kid. And pain.

After I sat down, the older of the two kids came and sat next to me. He may have been around 8 or 10, I can’t really tell. He had cool flowing long blonde surfer hair, and without my even looking in his direction he said “what’s up dude?”. I was surprised by this kid’s outgoing nature, especially since my household defaults to introvert bordering on hermit, but hey, good for that kid. I responded with a standard pleasantry, and returned to spacing out in the general direction of my son while I contemplated what random way I’d waste time playing on my phone.

Then this kid said “Whoa! Dude!!(yes, second time he called me dude) what happened to your arms?! You OK dude??!(3rd Dude, dude).

I looked at this kid, his eyes wide, and then looked down at the the white bandages wrapping my forearms just above my elbows. I replied “Yeah dude(when in rome), I’m good. Crashed my mountain bike a few days ago when I messed up a landing and scraped up my arms pretty bad. But I’m alright. Just the price of having fun.”

The kid: “Dude(I have now decided to stop counting, I too like to use this word too much so whatevs). That must hurt. You don’t even know man. I’ve got so much pain in my life…”

And then he went on for the next few minutes to describe how he has to get a shot every month because he’s allergic to his cats and dog, and how he got five stitches on his face from when he ran into a corner, and how he fell off his bike a few years ago and he broke his leg so he hasn’t rode it since. Now the bike is rusting in his garage. He ended the whole story with “yeah dude, I’ve got so much pain, you don’t even know dude.”

I blinked.

My heart broke that this kid had already adopted such a mindset towards pain, and was going down the path of avoiding discomfort at the cost of a life well lived.

I briefly thought about detailing all my injuries; the broken bones, concussions, torn nerves, torn ligaments, gun shot wound, how I’ve lost count of the stitches, scrapes, burns, bruises, and cuts. How I have to stretch and do yoga every morning so I can move like a normal human and not like Frankenstein. How I feel that the price has been worth it, given all that I’ve gotten to do. How I feel lucky as my pain pales in comparison to the guy who trained me, now a triple amputee, or my friends who aren’t with us anymore.

Quickly I realized I didn’t want to get in a pissing contest with a nine year old, nor did I want to be that crazy guy at the library. I refrained from the lecture.

I wish I had some sage wisdom to gently pass on to this kid. Unfortunately I’m not that witty, wise, or sage. Instead I stumbled through something like “dude, you can’t let pain slow you down. Yeah dude, there’s pain, but that’s just the price you pay for getting to do fun stuff and living a good life. Please get back on that bike. Don’t give up.”

He was like” yeah dude, you don’t know. I’ve just got so much pain dude”. I think I said “please don’t give up dude” again before we parted ways.

In the hours since I’ve thought of many different things I wish I would have said to him that maybe would have had a bigger impact. But then my best speech would probably fall on deaf ears, as A. he’s like 9. and B. when someone has made up their mind, the best argument in the world isn’t going to change it.

Plus he’s a kid. He’ll likely bounce back, little humans seem to be the resilient sort.

As I thought more, I realized my despair was not so much with him, but from the mirror he held up to me.

I’ve crashed my bike plenty, and this one was relatively minor. But a nagging thought in my head came up that I don’t recall having before: “Do I really want to keep doing this?”

Aside from the scrapes, the crash aggravated an old shoulder injury, as well as an old hip injury. All the pain together has me limping around and losing sleep. I briefly thought of getting rid of the bike, maybe trading it for a less aggressive cross country style, or giving up all together and sticking to hiking.

But I love mountain biking. I look forward to every ride and always feel better afterwards. No doubt, someday I will have to stop because my body will be physically incapable. And every time I go out, I take a risk of a crash that could lead to severe consequences. It’s a lower probability when compared to other sports, but the results could still be life altering or even life ending.

So I choose to continue to pay the price of admission. Some guaranteed pain from getting banged up now and then, and the minor risk of a much worse outcome.

There’s a lot of parallels there. Investing is an easy one. Yeah, staying heavily invested in stocks for the long term will likely lead to a better return with little actual work. But you pay the price when you gut it out through some crazy volatility.

My recent experience with full time SAHD life is another. I got to spend way more time with my kids then most people get a chance to. I paid with a small chunk of my sanity.

I worked a very secure job, that could have led to a pension worth over a million dollars. The price was sleep deprivation, crazy schedule, and doing something for 6 more years that I didn’t care to do.

On and on this can go. Sometimes the price is worth it, sometimes it’s not. The price is always the same; pain, in one of it’s many forms. Then there’s the trade off. You have one pain or the other. Even if you tread lightly through life and attempt to avoid every pain or discomfort, something will eventually catch up. And it will probably suck that much more without any other painful experiences to put in perspective.

I could stop mountain biking now. But there would be a lot of regret, and if I quit I don’t like the type of person I would become; tiptoeing through life letting fear drive me. That would hurt.

Keeping this in mind helps me maintain perspective, on the occasions when the bill comes due and perhaps I got complacent about the cost.

For now I’ll keep riding my bike. The price is worth it. I hope that kid gets back on his.

What’s worth the price to you?