What’s your response when things go wrong? Or when you’re helpless? Most of us stress, right? And what does that do to the situation?
The thing is, I know how I should respond, I know I need to keep a level head and that stress just makes the whole issue worse and clouds my judgement etc etc. I understand the logic of it, until something goes amiss and suddenly logic goes out the window and panic and stress take its place…
Until the other day when we found ourselves in a very alarming situation and I’m still trying to understand how I was so at peace during the scene because I feel more scared and panicked looking back on it than I did at the time!
We decided to take a road trip up to Northern Bali in search of some waterfalls and temples. Leaving most of our belongings at a hostel in Ubud we packed all we would need for the night into my camera bag plus some snacks for the road and climbed aboard the motorcycle. It was about 1 and half hours to our first destination: a vast lake with a temple situated on one of it’s banks. We’d left most of the tourists behind us already and it was so peaceful and untouched.
From here we began to climb into the mountains, pausing at the top for some lunch with a stunning view of the lake beneath us. Then we descended a steep rough road to some marvellous waterfalls:
We climbed back up the rough road and then continued our journey north towards Lovina Beach. To reach it we had to scale more mountains, then about 50 minutes off our target we began our very steep descent down the mountains. It was a very economical drive, there was no need at all for the accelerator, but the brakes were being squeezed, under constant pressure all the way. About half way down, and still a very long way from the bottom, we were sailing down a particularly steep stretch of road, when very suddenly the brakes gave out… Yes, we were riding down a mountain squeezing the brakes as hard as possible, when out of nowhere they stopped working! This is the stuff of nightmares. Miraculously Zak, who was driving, calmly managed to bring the bike to stop on the flattened entrance to someone’s driveway. And that’s where we were: stranded on the side of a very steep mountain in a foreign country, no phone service and well out of reach of the AA, with a motorcycle who’s brakes had failed and two of us who had no comprehension as to why!
This is the moment to freak out right? If you can’t panic now, when can you? And the weird thing is if I was back home I almost certainly would have stressed out. But something about the complete helplessness of it all was almost comical and that bought us enough time for us to remember logic and knowing that stress wasn’t going to help, instead we thought of the quote: “The key is to believe in your ability to figure it out”. We were helpless but we didn’t feel desperate, and in fact help was on the way, though not in the way we were used to.
I’m not sure what that X factor was that kept the stress at bay, but I do know that it changed what could have been a desperate nightmare, into an adventurous afternoon, a shared experience with some really kind people and a story we will always remember, proof that whenever we feel out of control, free-falling down the mountain. Its not desperate, we can figure it out, with some help, patience and remembering the lessons we’ve already learnt.
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”-J.R.R Tolkien
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