So you can imagine that something as big as our moving away from Atlanta would not slip quietly by without the appropriate amount of festivities. Last Saturday got the ball rolling, but since then Will and I have had office lunches, dinners with friends, and a whole other party! Last night we met up with friends at Twisted Taco to hang out for one of the last times. The cool part about it? The bar had a mechanical bull. And Will and I rode it.
Will's ride was slightly more graceful than mine. He, being the athletic demon that he is, can pretty much handle anything physical that comes his way. Even a wrenching, writhing, bucking, foaming-at-the-mouth mechanical bull.
I, on the other hand, have never been blessed with the gift of athleticism. And I have to say, the mechanical bull experience was probably one of the more embarrassing things that I have been through in quite some time. Just ask the crowd who saw my butt crack—and thought it was the funniest thing ever—as I was trying to mount the thing... which in and of itself was a very difficult task. It took me about five minutes to even get on it... a lot of seemingly wasted effort for a ride that lasted a total of 2 seconds.
As I stared at my nemesis, Bill the Mechanical Bull, I could have told you in advance what was going to happen: I could have told you that I was not going to be able to get on the dang thing. I could have told you body parts that should never see the light of day would possibly be exposed for all to laugh at. I could have told you the ride would last the equivalent of a blink.
I could have told you all of this. But you know what? All of those (very good) reasons—reasons that, had I been sane, would normally have been more than enough evidence to convince me against the decision—didn’t seem so daunting last night. Staring at Bill the Bull, I knew that this was my first test: could I put aside my fear, pride, and self-preservation to jump into a once-in-a-lifetime experience with both feet?
This was a cross-roads for me—an opportunity to make the uncharacteristically "brave" choice, or a chance to once again recede to the back of the room where I have spent oh-so-much-time watching others make the choice that I have never had the courage to make. If I said “no” to Bill, I knew that my hopes for Australia would be just that much harder to attain. If I couldn't make the brave decision now, what made me think that just by virtue of being in another country I would automatically "grab life by the horns," so to speak? We would be moving into a shadow-version of Australia, living in another culture but not actually living it. That sense of victory that comes from vanquishing a fear and accomplishing something new would remain elusive, forever overshadowed by trepidation.
So I said “yes”—not once, but twice. As soon as Bill threw me, I got right back up and rode him again (after another five minutes of huffing and puffing my way onto his back… and after a kind member of the audience provided me with a sweater to tie around my waist!).
Symbolic? Maybe a little. Will and I spent our last hurrah like the cowboys of yore’, roping and riding a bucking beast across the plains of America into the wild unknown. But it was symbolic on another level as well—bravery reigning victoriously over fear, hope for the future triumphing over the shackles of the past. The beauty of understanding what it really means to live life to the fullest.
And you know what? It will be one wild ride.
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