Have you ever been amazed of the outcomes of an unexpected decision which you were hesitated to make? A part of you did not want to do it, but then something pushed you so hard to let it happen.

One day in 2017, I was on a cycling excursion from Phnom Penh to Koh Kong province with a group of my friends. It was approximately 280-kilometer riding trip that would normally take just around five to six hours to get there if I used car or bus. Unfortunately, my transport was a bike. You know what, I had never had any experiences on biking for that long distance before or even ridden bike as my daily routine.

At first I thought that I was not physically strong enough for that tough task though, so I was really frightened that I would not be able to make it to our destination. But then, I didn’t know what pushed me to the point that I eventually decided to take the challenge, from which I might have regretted if I did not because, after all, I realized that the trip taught me a useful lesson in life.

It is true that I was not a well-trained cyclist, so how could I manage to cycle with my friends throughout the trip? Admittedly it was not an easy journey at all because the distance was around 170 miles and the road conditions were bumpy and hilly at some points. Plus, it would take us a few days to get to Koh Kong province. However, even though there were obstacles, we believed that it was not impossible as well. 

On our trip, we had to set out clear goal for each day, so that we had a sense of direction where we were heading for. This decision was made because we all understood that doing the job step by step is the only choice we could bring about the achievement. This means we were riding around 100 kilometers a day. More importantly, we would not have stopped if, by the end of the day, we had not reached the point yet, which was our resilient commitment.

Moreover, there were times when my journey was going within difficulties. At that time, I remember cycling in the dark cycling until 7 or 8 o’clock, so I could barely see the way as there were not any lights alongside of the road. Plus, the road itself was extremely hilly, and some parts of it were under constructions, so my bike and I were going up and down repeatedly. At one point when I was going down from the top of the mountain, I was not carefully holding the brakes, which let my bike going down speedily. Then, suddenly my front wheel hit a deep pothole really strongly as I had not been aware of it. Not being able to control the situation, I was shocked and terribly fell off the bike. 

My arms and knees were badly cut, but I could not see it because of the darkness. When I touched those parts of my body, I felt the wetness of my blood dripped out of the surface of my clothes. It hurt so much, yet I was thankful that I was still laying alive on the road.  Swiftly, I rose up from the ground, brushed the dust out of myself, and picked my bike up right at time when my friends came. Despite the facts that I got some injuries, and my bike’s neck was bended in an unusual way, I still keep on moving forward because we were still 5 kilometers away from our pinned point yet. 

During the time when I was riding for the rest of that day, I started to think about myself. What had just happened was not different to what always does to the reality in my daily life. It is virtually inevitable that life has ups and downs. While sometimes I am happy, the other times I am upset due to impacts of the circumstances I am living in. 

For me, based on this unforgettable riding experience, I have learned that whether I stay in enjoyable or tough places, the continuity of my life will be on. Unexpected things will occur no matter what, some of which are problems that might be absolutely complicated as its complexity could possibly causes us a lot of stress. The bigger the challenge is, the more time we need to solve. To cope and overcome these, not only our physical endurance is needed, but also the mental one, all of which would be gained from my actual life experiences. 

If I encounter with huge issues that cannot be dealt at once, I will have to break them down, and then work on each task step by step, just like the way I did while I was cycling to Koh Kong. Sometimes, when I am dealing with the problems, which means the problems and I are staying very closely together in one box, I will not be able to see the whole picture of them. This makes it hard for me to choose which strategy is the best for the situation I am working with. Therefore, I need to take a break from the problems as this will give me a deeper and wiser perspective towards their nature. 

By doing these, the impossibility became achievable for me. Surely, I know that the process of overcoming life challenges consumes much more time than eating a hamburger which was readily made and placed on the table for you. Yet, as long as we don’t give up, and keep moving forward, I believe that our life will be developed towards a point that we might have never imagined, and by then we will be astonished by how far we will have been through. 

Cheers!