Keith Meyer writes in “Whole Life Transformation”:

[My son] Kyle had mastered riding [a bicycle] with training wheels and was eager to try [a two-wheeler] …. That sparkling blue Schwinn bike with the chrome handle bars wasn't exactly a Harley, but it went fast enough for a five-year-old to be simultaneously scared to death and higher than a kite.

After some false starts and a few erratic swerves that just missed the neighbor's mailboxes, he eventually got the hang of controlling the bike …. Soon enough the side streets of our little neighborhood were his speedway. With every lap he looked a little more sure of himself, and I began to wonder if he would ever quit and give it a rest.

Then I noticed that he was not so sure of himself. The anxious look on his face grew more serious with each lap. Something was wrong. Suddenly, he ran the bike up the curb and onto the grass in front of our house and leaped off, tumbling head over heels, while the bike careened to a halt.

I ran to see if he was okay, and he looked up at me and said, "Dad, how do you stop?" He had known how to use the brake when still on training wheels, but in the rush of being free of the constricting training wheels he forgot what he used to know how to do. So after another lesson on stopping and several more crash landings, he eventually remembered how to slow down and stop.

My [life] looked a lot like Kyle's first bike ride. Hooked on the fast pace of [life], I got dangerously out of control. It took a crash to help me slow down and learn to stop.