“Where have you been?” a neighbor named Stacy said.

 “Where have you been?” my neighbor, Robert, asked.

I was riding my three-wheeled bike down our road. The bike is made specifically for people like me who are disabled. "Well," I said to the dozen or so neighborhood folks who asked me the same question. "I took time off to be depressed."

I was on my bike that day because of a breakthrough. I can still visualize myself on a recent afternoon, when I debated about opening our front door and re-entering the outside world. The breakthrough occurred because of this thought: “If I keep waiting until I want to do something, I’ll be waiting forever.”

Oddly, this new way of thinking began because of a 21-year-old movie I watched called, “City Slickers.” Mitch, played by Billy Crystal, is dreadfully depressed as he takes us through his comical mid-life funk.

During his journey of recovery, he was taught “the secret of life.” But here’s the thing: Finding that secret could never have happened until Mitch stopped waiting for happiness to come to him and instead took the first step himself.

First steps, I have learned, are nowhere near as huge as they sound. They’re actually quite simple. They have to be.

My husband, Bob, heard me crying when the movie ended. “I thought it was a comedy,” he said.

“It was hysterical.”

“Then why are you crying?”

“Because it made me realize I’ve wasted six months of my life by settling into depression and waiting, waiting, waiting to come out of it.”

That was the instant I took that first step. I grabbed my cane and said, “I’m going to ride my trike.”

He tried to stop me. “You’ve been on your feet all day. You can hardly walk after that. And you haven’t been on your trike for ages!”

“Bob, if I don’t do this now, I am never going to do it.” I knew that. I knew that from the depths of me. I had to do something to help myself.

And it had to be now.

I’d have never done this had I thought, “I’m going to grab my cane, find the keys, check the weather, find the bike lock,” and on and on, ending with something overwhelmingly sabotaging like, “and ride every day for the rest of my entire life.”

I biked down our road, loving every minute. It’s a new year, a new me, a new life and all because of one simple decision.

And so, the secret of life that Mitch learned?

To paraphrase from the movie: “Just one thing,” Curly, the wise cowboy said. “You stick to that and the rest is foolish detail.”

“What is that one thing?”

“That’s what you have to find out for yourself.”

For Mitch, it was not about taking an adventurous trip out west; it was merely agreeing to read the brochure.

For Mitch’s wife, it was just saying these words to him: “I want you to have that adventure and find … your smile.”

It was when Mitch realized by simply giving his wife one single kiss: “Today is my very best day!”

And for me, it was grabbing my old wooden walking stick.

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Award-winning columnist/novelist, Saralee Perel can be reached at sperel@saraleeperel.com/

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