Stay-at-Home Dad: Kristen Stewart, Me & The Broken Bicycle

On a recent September trip to the doctor for my yearly physical, a four-month-old magazine was staring me in the face. No, this isn’t about how great it is to find such a recent magazine at the physician’s office. It is something much more spiritual than that. 

The glossy magazine before me was the June 2012 issue of Elle. I am not a big reader of such female fodder, but on the cover was a striking photograph of actress and current media whipping-girl Kristen Stewart. I opened the magazine and it went straight to page 258 where I read this quote:

“Maybe because my life is so perfect, when I see the other side of life, it just seems like...You can learn so much from the bad things. I feel boring. I feel like, Why is everything so easy for me?”

Well, sister, how ya feeling now? 

After receiving a clean bill of health, I returned home where I had a few hours to kill before the kids come home from school and the homework shuffle begins, so I decided to go out for a little bike ride. As I felt the sun on my face and filed my lungs up with sweet early autumn air I thought to myself, “Life doesn’t get much better than this.”  

At that exact moment my left leg made an awkward motion as the crank arm on my bicycle fell clean off. In layman’s terms, I couldn’t peddle any more...I was stranded without tools or my cellphone around 5 miles from my home. So I started the long walk back home with just my broken bike and my thoughts.

My brain went straight to the quote that I had just read, and thinking about if you seemingly have everything, how easy it would be to be cavalier to think about something bad happening to you. I mean how great was (is) her life?  She is young, rich, beautiful, and if all these things weren’t enough, she had (has) the love of Robert Pattinson. Coincidentally, he is my wife’s celebrity crush, and if she ever has the good fortune to meet him she has my written consent to do whatever she wants. 

I laughed to myself as I found it so ironic that the universe likes to hand you a little adversity, especially when you are a little cocky about your life. Adversity when things get difficult helps you build character, and even more important, reminds you to be grateful for all the things in your life when things are going smoothly.

There are some religions that have prayers for every little thing and maybe by appreciating all of life’s little blessings you can show gratitude at every level. Thank’s for the sunshine, thanks for the birds singing, thanks for the food on my plate. All these things to be thankful for does grant a lot of perspective toward the things that we don’t have, and necessarily don’t need.

As for me right now, I’m just pretty grateful that I am not Kristen Stewart!