What Getting “Doored” on a Bike Taught me about Life

Getting doored

Nobody wants to get “doored” on their bike, but I’m glad it happened to me. Getting doored is exactly what it sounds like. It’s when you’re riding a bicycle in an urban environment, and a car door opens right in front of you. It’s not good.

I lived in Boston for a few years and rode my bike to and from grad school. One day, clipping along down the same road I took home every afternoon, a car door opened before I could get out of the way. My bike stopped moving, but I didn’t. I flew past the hood of the car, and into the road near the sidewalk.

When I woke up, a group of men speaking Mandarin were looking down at me and rubbing cold cans of Sprite on my face. They were cooks from a Chinese restaurant who had seen me crash and pulled me out of the street onto the sidewalk. With no bags of ice on hand, the cans of Sprite would have to do.

I felt a little like the man in the Biblical parable on the road to Jericho. I hadn't been robbed, and the only things that beat me were inattention and the concrete. But there I was, on the roadside, being tenderly cared for by an unlikely group of strangers whose names I didn’t know, speaking a language I couldn’t understand, who didn’t have the perfect tools.

I got up with shaky feet, thanked them the best I could, and was sent walking home with a Sprite for the road. I’m grateful I was wearing a helmet that day, but more than that, for the life lessons I learned from the crash.

Total safety is an illusion. Surprises will come. What you can trust most isn’t necessarily what you think it is. And, knowing what will hold you when you fall changes everything.

Being disillusioned is a good thing

Spoiler alert. The door is coming. It’s just life. In one way or another, we all get “doored” from time to time. Whether the lesson comes from Jim Morrison or the Buddha, “no one here gets out alive,” is true, but so easy to forget.

We get complacent in life. Our daily routines, the same road we take the kids to school on, the same faces at work, the same friends — these things create illusions of what is predictable, safe, and worthy of trust. It’s worked for a while, so it will keep working, right? For better and for worse, life will surprise us.

I was operating under the illusion of safety that day, because I had taken the same street over and over, and it had worked out fine. But that illusion was taken from me, and that’s the good thing. The risk was always there. I just forgot about it.

We so often talk about being “disillusioned” like it’s a bad thing. The story goes that a young idealist faces the hard facts of the real world, discovers what's behind the curtain in their industry, and loses some of their passion or optimism.

But if we approach it with courage, being disillusioned means we are living a life that is more real. A life with fewer illusions and knowing what is real frees us to move forward with confidence into a new life.

Getting doored reveals what is already true

We learn what is steady by testing it. Sometimes we test intentionally, and sometimes the road or the door does it for us. Moment of struggle clarify a lot. In fact, they are some of our most trusted teachers. Some friends leave when difficulty arises, and you learn they weren’t actually friends. You discover that your body can ache and get hurt easier than you thought. The institutions we align ourselves with are more imperfect than we imagined. Someone shows up who is loyal and loves you through everything. We don’t discover these same things in easy times.

Struggles reveal what was already true. Some relationships were already fragile. Others have been steadfast and strong without you realizing it. It makes sense that we often avoid asking tough questions or testing what’s worthy of trust. There’s a lot we might not want to find out, and you can choose not to ask. You can go down the same road every day, and hope no doors open unexpectedly. But there’s more real life if you want that, too.

Trust and risk go hand in hand

It might sound counterintuitive, but it is in getting knocked down that we find what’s necessary to take the biggest risks and experience the biggest rewards in our life. Rewards like joy, real love, and lasting friendship.

We thrive and know new life when we take bold action. We take bold action when we know what we can trust. We know what we can trust when we struggle or feel weak. And so, thriving and new life requires struggle and failure.

Ask what is real

No one wants to get doored, but there can be some good in it. I don’t mean that we deserve what we get, or that sickness or accidents happen for some reason. Sometimes, we draw a short straw, and we didn’t deserve it. But there is always something to learn. When you get thrown for a loop or surprised by life, ask what held you. What was strong? What illusions did you lose?

The only thing that will never leave us is what’s true. Whether you are celebrating or struggling, you can always stand on more solid ground by asking the simple but difficult question, “What is real here?”

So when you discover the truly stable, solid things, hold onto them for dear life, because that’s what they are. If you can, give thanks for what held you, get back up, move through the world with clearer eyes, and take that next risk that will help free you. What’s real is the only life worth living.

Oh, and wear a helmet. It’s crazy out there.