Harley and Me Read Online Free Page B

and again.
    â€”ABRAHAM HAROLD MASLOW
    That night, I lie in bed tormented over the $8,000 used Harley parked in my garage, taking up space that might otherwise be filled with my Honda Civic. What is wrong with me? I will call Rebecca tomorrow and beg her to take it back. I am not a biker. I am a mom. A suburban mom. This is grief talking. I am coming completely unhinged.
    Given my family history, these are not thoughts I take lightly. My mother was severely bipolar. She spent most of my childhood hidden away in her bedroom, medicated into a stupor, or institutionalized and undergoing shock treatments. I have struggled my entire life to ensure I don’t follow that path. I feel as if I’m treading dangerous waters.
    Resisting the impulse to call Rebecca and return the bike, I do research instead. I make phone calls. Carl Lejuez, a psychologist at the University of Maryland and an expert on addiction, reassures me. He tells me that risk is a good thing.
    And the downside? I ask.
    It takes only one bad judgment in any kind of risky situation, he says, and “you’re toast.”
    See: I am treading on thin ice.
    He tells me to take heart. The fact is most people are overly protective and risk averse. The field of psychology mostly focuses on pathologizing risk, looking at all the ways risky behavior can create problems. Scientists don’t tend to study what’s useful about it. And that’s a shame, because risk taking can be an enriching and important part of life.
    He tells me about BART, the Balloon Analog Risk Task, a computer game used to assess a person’s capacity for risk. The player in goggles sees a cartoon balloon on a computer screen and presses a button to inflate the balloon. As the balloon gets bigger, the player accumulates money or points. But when the balloon pops, the player loses everything. The player can cash out at any time before the pop. The idea is to see how big the player will inflate the balloon before it bursts.
    Most people are not willing to take on a healthy degree of risk, he explains. They’re not expanding the balloon far enough to find the balance between risk and benefit. They cash out far too soon. As a species, he says, we have become much too conservative. This trend is especially notable as we age.
    â€œIf you think about transitions in other parts of life,” Lejuez explains, “there’s always new things. You go to a new school, you get your first job, you have your first child. I’m not saying everyone does all those things, but in life, up to middle age, there’s always another transition, there’s always something to knock you off balance and keep you smart.”
    We usually grade someone’s success at midlife by how well they’ve removed all these types of transitions. And that, he says, is unfortunate. You’ve now landed in a safe spot and you feel comfort. The very success and prosperity you strived for becomes a double-edged sword. Risk taking, though, forces you to have transitions, to not always know the answers. It forces you to wake up and think that maybe somethingwill happen today that is totally unexpected. Because by middle age, we don’t usually have those days anymore.
    The day-in, day-out process of midlife, especially for those who crave novelty and sensation, will start to feel deadening. “At first you think: Wow! This is success! And then you wake up one day and think, What the fuck just happened? I thought this was what I wanted and I’m actually feeling less alive than before ,” Lejuez says.
    The benefits of risk taking are operative whether the risk is physical—rock-climbing, BASE jumping, hang gliding—or not. Financial, emotional, spiritual, and creative risk can all provide the same stimulation. As a species, we often focus on physical risk because it’s so tied to our biological need to persevere and continue life. But emotional risk can be even more