Along for the Ride

by Sarah Dessen

“I told you. I’m very good at being bad at things.” I glanced over at him again as we came to another stop sign. “So you never get discouraged.” “Of course I do,” he said. “Failing sucks. But it’s better than the alternative.” “Which is?” “Not even trying.”

Maybe the truth was, it shouldn’t be easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It’s the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When something’s difficult to come by, you’ll do that much more to make sure it’s even harder—if not impossible—to lose.

it didn’t make you noble to step away from something that wasn’t working, even if you thought you were the reason for the malfunction. Especially then. It just made you a quitter. Because if you were the problem, chances were you could also be the solution. The only way to find out was to take another shot.

It was so easy to disown what you couldn’t recognize, to keep yourself apart from things that were foreign and unsettling. The only person you can be sure to control, always, is yourself. Which is a lot to be sure of, but at the same time, not enough.

“And the bottom line is, what defines you isn’t how many times you crash, but the number of times you get back on the bike. As long as it’s one more, you’re all good.”