Life is like a Soul Cycle Wheel

One month after having our baby girl, I returned to a spin bike in East Hampton, where we spent a dreamy month of maternity leave holed up with our newborn. I headed into the quaint studio and clicked into my bike. As the class started and the music turned up, I felt the slow return of the exercise endorphin high I always get.

As the class went on and the climbs got harder, I was surprised how out of shape I felt. And while my c-section scar was mostly healed, I felt some discomfort as I tried to keep up with the choreography. As I struggled to keep up with the pace and watched others whose effort appeared more like that of meditating, my ego kicked in and I thought to myself, no really, I was a competitive athlete. I just had a baby and a c-section. And then it occurred to me, life really is like a Soul Cycle Wheel…for everyone.

In a spin class, how much tension you add to your bike is only up to you and the degree to which you do or don’t can’t be determined by anyone else. How much more so in life where the tension/suffering/pain is also often not visible but neither measurable nor controllable. In that moment, I was reminded not only how hard I can be on myself but on others. And just as no one could see the physical scar I was trying to protect, the internal ones we all carry are often suppressed in the most sophisticated of ways.

For the rest of the ride, I shifted my perspective both to myself – and replaced admonishment with acceptance – and to everyone in the room around me. As someone said (the quote is widely misattributed), “Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle…” and may be climbing directly up hill.