Swipe Left On Perfection

I signed up for a HIIT class because it was a requirement for those seeking a position as coach at this location. And who doesn’t love the opportunity to take another coaches class?!

The team was friendly, very welcoming. The schedule described “assault bikes and plyometrics,” and I thought, “Cool, I love a little light cardio and Greek mythology.” Turns out the assault bike is less Pegasus and more dragon—fire-breathing, wing-flapping, and absolutely committed to exposing my overconfidence in front of strangers.

Scene One: HIIT, Humility, and a Very Loud Fan

The room was cheerful in the way only a place full of rubber flooring and shared suffering can be. Our coach—who smiled with all the ethical menace of a dentist—set the clock for intervals: One Minute on, 10 seconds active rest, rotating.

The assault bike whooshed to life, its giant fan blade announcing my fitness level as loudly as a town crier with a megaphone.

Round one: I sprinted like a hero in the first five minutes of a movie.

Round two: I discovered that air has weight, and it was all sitting on my chest.

Round three: My soul tried to leave through my shoelaces.

Between bouts on the bike, we did plyometrics: box jumps, skater hops, and the dreaded burpees. The instructions were simple: “Explode!” Mine were more like “politely lift off and apologize to gravity.” At some point, my sweat formed an oddly specific puddle that looked like a poorly drawn map of South America. I took that as a sign the universe wanted me to hydrate.

Humility arrived somewhere around the fifteenth burpee, when I realized the woman next to me was landing silently—like a ninja on a library carpet—while I sounded like a sack of cutlery dropped from a low shelf. She gave me a small nod and a thumbs-up, and I learned that kindness in a HIIT class doesn’t require words. Sometimes it’s a nod, a shared grimace, or a passing of the disinfectant wipes like a beacon of mercy.

“Soft land, softer ego,” our coach said to all of us. And I felt my shoulders drop an inch, my breath steady, my effort become—dare I say—less dramatic and more honest. Focused. In a state of flow.

One beautiful realization about my life is that I am able to find this same feeling now at any time. I know what activities bring on this state for me, or rather that my brain has been able to focus in a way that I don’t know that I’ve ever been able to before.

Scene Two: Pearls, Patience, and the Softest Pressure

Later that afternoon, hands still buzzing from handlebars, I sat at my table with a small tray of pearls. Star-shaped, tiny rounds like moon drops, odd oblong ones that looked like commas taking a nap. They came in gentle colors: buttery yellow, champagne with a wink, off-white with a quiet glow, and a few bright oranges like tiny sunset fragments.

I had a fine drill, a steady light, and a determination that, earlier, had not served me well on the assault bike. I learned quickly: you don’t force a hole through a pearl. You find the path the pearl is willing to take. If you shove, it cracks. If you lean in with patience and pressure that’s more suggestion than command, it yields. The drill hummed like a distant hive. The nacre dust was barely there, a shimmering whisper.

A star-shaped pearl tried to make an escape, pinging across the table like a tiny meteor. I caught it with the reflexes of someone who, two hours earlier, had betrayed zero plyometric promise. I took a breath. Thread, needles, tiny knots—two forward, one back—little pauses to admire the glow. Some pearls were perfectly round, the kind that make jewelers sigh. Others were lopsided. A few were pockmarked, which (I decided) made them interesting. I arranged them in gradient: off-white to champagne to yellow to orange, the way a morning sky learns to be afternoon.

Somewhere between the third and fourth knot, I realized I was smiling. The necklace began to feel like a conversation between exactness and acceptance.

The Thread That Pulls Both Worlds Together

In the HIIT class, I learned that power isn’t theatrical; it’s rhythmic. The assault bike doesn’t want your tantrum; it wants your cadence. Plyometrics don’t want your drama; they want your hush—land quiet, absorb, go again. In the pearls, I learned that beauty doesn’t come from dominating the material; it comes from coaxing it. A cracked pearl is a lesson in force. A finished strand is a lesson in patience.

Humility is the shared backbone. The bike humbles your lungs; the pearls humble your hands. You can’t muscle your way into a peaceful heart rate, just like you can’t bully luster out of nacre. You meet both where they are: one breath, one stroke, one gentle turn of the drill.

Kindness, too, weaves through both. At the gym, it’s letting someone hop in on the bike, offering a supportive glance, sharing the chalk, not measuring your worth against a stranger’s rep count. At the table, it’s accepting a pearl’s odd shape, placing it proudly between two perfect rounds, recognizing that the strand is more beautiful for the variation. I think of the class as a necklace of people—star-shaped personalities, round and steady souls, oblong oddballs who keep it interesting—strung together by the thin, strong thread of shared effort.

What the Necklace Taught the Bike (And Me)

When I finally tied the last knot and tested the drape, the necklace settled against my collarbone with a quiet confidence.

An hour later, back at the gym for a cool-down walk because I am, apparently, a new person now, I felt the same steadying ease in my stride. It wasn’t about being the fastest cyclist or the fanciest jeweler. It was about attention, care, and the willingness to show up—to feel a little foolish while you learn.

Here’s the life lesson that wrapped itself around both the handlebars and the silk thread:

Strength isn’t how hard you push—it’s how well you listen.

Form matters more than frenzy.

Consistency beats intensity when the goal is a life you actually like.

And the best kind of shine comes from gentleness applied over time.

Or, if you prefer it on a tiny charm: Be the thread, not the hammer. 🧵

So if you see me on an assault bike, legs churning and ego in a comfy seat somewhere behind me, know that I’m thinking about pearls—how they ask to be handled with care, how they reward patience with glow. And if you spot me stringing a necklace, know that somewhere in the rhythm of breath and knots is the same kindness we offer each other on the gym floor: a nod, a smile, and the quiet faith that we’re all just trying to land a little softer. ✨