Time To Stop

A little girl and her father went out for a bicycle adventure one day. The little girl has been riding for quite awhile now and she loves the bicycle. So that day they decided to tackle the hill behind their house with their bicycles.

Father and daughter sat atop the descent and looked down it. To that little girl, it was Mount Everest. “You sure you want to try?” the father asked.

“I think so,” she gulped.

“Just put on your brakes when you want to stop. Don’t forget your brakes.”

“Okay.”

Her father went down midpoint and waited. Down she came. The bicycle began to pick up speed. The handles began to shake. Her eyes got big. Her pedals moved in a blur. As she raced past her father she screamed, “I can’t remember how to stop pedaling!”

And she crashed into a curb.

If we do not know how to stop, it can be disastrous. It is true on bicycles. It is true in life.

Sometimes doing something seem to be okay and alright because “It has always been like that. So why bother changing?” We are rather stubborn. We could see that our cycling thus far has achieved nothing. We are still on the same bicycle and on the same track and we do not have the skill to tackle challenging tracks like hills and mountains. But we are stubborn. We continue doing what we want because it has always been done like that.

Until we realize that we need to stop in challenging times like this, we would never be able to achieve anything. All we are doing is just having some fun and enjoying the ride downhill. And once it is time to put on the brakes, we would have forgotten how to. And we would crash. Whether we get up after the fall or not is another matter to think about.

We are going downhill now. It is time to stop and listen. It is time to stop and compromise. It is time to stop and learn. It is time to stop and change course.

It is time to stop before we crash.