1 You need training wheels at first
Think of school, you needed to be in the same place all the time with the same kids and you needed the teacher support to encourage you to speak to each other, share toys and resolve conflict.
2. You need practise
Just like riding a bike, it takes practise. You probably aren’t still best friends with your kindergarten bestie, and that is ok. With each new attempt it gets easier, and more fun. The more you practise the more naturally it comes and the more fun it is.
3. If you stop doing it for long enough, you aren’t sure if you still know how.
After you start driving a car, for example, you may stop riding your bike. You can easily forget how fun it was and how good it was for you. And if you don’t do it for long enough, you worry that you won’t be able to do it anymore. Same with friendships. When you get a full-time job and have kids etc… you can forget to make friendships a priority. Then it can feel overwhelming and daunting to try and make new friends and you aren’t sure you remember how to be a good friend.
4. If you hit a bump, it is scary.
You are riding along great, enjoying yourself and the scenery, then bump! The path gets unexpectedly wobbly and you rush to get to smoother terrain. You might avoid that path forever instead of trying to navigate it again no matter how much you enjoyed it before. Friendships are like that too, and it can be scary to have those conversations or navigate difficult terrain. Sometimes it is so scary that people walk away and don’t try harder.
5. If you fall off, it hurts.
Hopefully on a bike you were wearing adequate safety gear, but falling off still hurts. It can hurt so much that you don’t want to risk riding again. If you relate that to friendships that would mean not trusting any new friends because you got hurt by an old one.
6. It is fun and freeing, and they help you get where you’re going faster.
Riding a bike was your first taste of freedom and independence. Similarly, friends are the people with whom we find ourselves and our place in the world. They are the ones we try on new personalities with until we find one that fits, and the ones who we emulate.
7. You learn new tricks
After a while, you learn to do jumps, wheelies, ride with one hand or no hands and give people a ride on the handlebars. You get confident as you are having fun. Friends can be like this too. They encourage and support you and with them you learn and grow without even realising you are developing important skills to navigate life in the future.
8. They can be uncomfortable
We all question who designed that bike seat. It might be the least comfortable chair in history. But if you love riding, you get used to it. Friends can be like that too. They can make you uncomfortable as they challenge you to grow outside your comfort zone, but they are worth it so you kinda don’t mind or notice most of the time when they are being a pain in the butt!
9. You can outgrow them
Think of the bike you had when you were 4, and all the bikes you had in-between. I loved my banana seat 70’s style bike I had in primary school, but yet eagerly ditched it for the cooler bright pink mountain bike when I reached high school. Whether I wanted to ditch it or not, the fact was, I outgrew it. We outgrow friends too. They stay in our memories and our hearts, and they are still good for someone else.
10. As you get older, sometimes you ride them.
Ok, most of the time you don’t ride your friends and that is why they are friends not lovers. But as “it’s complicated” grows in popularity along side “friends with benefits” I had to throw that one in there at the end there. An ode to all the friends I rode, and the ones that rode me! Haha
Friendship too!