Yet Another Lesson In NOT Taking Things Personally.

September 10th, 2008; 9:02 PM

Current mood:enlightened

I am in love with my bike seat! I had it adjusted about an inch higher, and now my ride is so much easier, faster, and most importantly –not hurting my knees anymore. I was watching an interview with Danica McKellar, who wrote a couple of math books targeted at  young girls; and she was saying what makes a big difference in how girls relate to math is their expectations for themselves and the expectations from other people around them. Like for instance: Our culture generally doesn't *expect* girls to be really strong in math. Although we purport to be an equal society, we don't promote math, science, and leadership as much to girls/women as we do to boys/men. It's strange because it is not even a conscious decision. Consciously, we are striving to be egalitarians; however, inadvertently we do not act in alignment with our ideals. Now how does this relate to my bike seat you are all wondering??? –I'll tell you… I didn't *expect* to be good at riding my bike. And Danica was saying how girls don't expect to be good at math, so when they hit a road bump, instead of seeing it as a *road bump* (no big deal), they make it bigger than it is and see it as an example of what they believe to be true: that they are not good at math. Where as a more useful way of interpreting that data would be the way guys generally see it when they have a road bump, they don't tend to see it as a personal failing in them but rather as simply a road bump, and then they keep on going. I had been riding my bike for the past few weeks, and I noticed my knees hurting which was a weird thing. Someone told me that bicycling was supposed to be a good cardiovascular work out while still being really easy on the knees. So, I made the assumption that something must be wrong with me. If everyone else thought this was easy, and had no problem with it…well then it must be me. I'm too fat, or I'm new at this and not strong enough yet…I don't know how to shift gears. I had a bunch of reasons, but never did I think that my seat was not adjusted correctly, until I read something online about how that was a common reason for knee/joint pain while bicycling. I then recalled how I had loaned my bike out to a woman who was shorter than me. I bet she lowered the seat! Duh. I went to the local bike shop and had someone help me figure out the correct height. And it made such a difference. I can peddle harder, go faster, and it's way more fun. I realized that in the future, instead of internalizing things in a negative way, I need to remember that it's nothing personal, and not a short coming of mine. I just probably need to ask a few questions and learn something new.