I heard a story about a teenager who wanted to learn to ride a unicycle. His first reaction was that a single wheel had to be simpler than mastering two and certainly easier than three. His mother found him a teacher and signed him up.
He expected to spend hours watching power points and reading strategies about
balance, but the teacher handed him a unicycle and told him to get on.
He fell.
"Wait, wait, I need to study this first," the student argued.
"Nope. Get back on."
A long string of falling followed, involving bloodied knees and elbows. The teacher stood by, unsympathetic about the scrapes. Maybe he knew something the student didn't.
After a ridiculously long
period, maybe two weeks, the teen stayed up. For three seconds. He whooped for joy. Gradually the time off the ground began to increase, and even exceed the time spent in the dirt. The teacher had poignant suggestions, well placed and brief. The boy listened with the motivation of one who has left the hypothetical world and entered the real one.
I spend an inordinate amount of time talking about what makes marriage work. Read this. Try that. Talk about those.
Practice these. But those of you who are out there in real time relationships are doing the actual work. You get beat up, and discouraged. You fall away from your intentions and lose the impetus to climb back up.
But you are the genuine riders. Bruises are not a sign that you are failing as much as proof that you are working. Twenty years is not a ridiculously long time to learn how to put another person's needs before your own.
And
by the way I am nicer than the unicycle teacher. I will listen if you cry.
Story credit goes to Peter Rhodes
