May 26, 2009
I went for a bike ride today. It seriously was the perfect day for a bike ride. I don’t know the exact temperature but it was the ideal weather with the sun shining and a hint of breeze to keep the rays from being too intense. It’s nice to live on a hill. That way the when I start off the ride it’s smooth and fast as I speed down the street. There are a bunch of cul-de-sacs around. I love that the neighborhood is so quiet and not busy because I can ride in and out of them, zig zagging as I please without worrying about a speeding car coming out of nowhere. It really was a very amazing ride. Like I said the sun was out, there was a soft breeze, and I could cruise along in perfect ease. It’s moments like these that make me feel like life isn’t so bad after all. There can be beauty found in the simplest things. Nature in and of itself can rejuvenate the soul like no other speech, sermon, or pep talk ever could. I had my ipod in my ear as I rode along. It was on shuffle and it was just my luck that it decided to chose some smooth music from the Finding Neverland soundtrack. I love it when my ipod is mysteriously in tune with the mood that I am in. I wanted to listen to something non-sentimental, something that I could just listen to without any specific thoughts popping in my head. Well, as usual, that didn’t work. Especially on the ride back to my house. As I said, my house is on somewhat of a hill. I was all of a sudden not so grateful for that fact. Going up hill on a beach cruiser that only goes one speed isn’t the easiest thing in the world. That’s when I had an interesting thought. You know, one of those thoughts that you get when the light bulb turns on in your head and the mysteries of life suddenly start to come out of the darkness and into the light? Well, at the beginning of the ride everything was great. The ride was smooth, perfect, life was good, nothing could rain on my parade, and all I could focus on was the perfection of the moment. I soaked it all in with every inhale of that sweet breeze. But coming back and going back up the hill changed my perspective of the day. All of a sudden I had a grudge against the sun because it was just a little too uncomfortable. The breeze didn’t seem to be having the same effect as I started to sweat. I had to push my legs with more effort against the pedals as my calves burned. Why on earth had I decided to take this ride when I knew the ride back would be so hard? But stopping was not an option. That would only make the journey back up the hill more prolonged. The best thing to do was to bite the bullet and push till the end of the road. Such is life I suppose. What is it people say? “What comes up must come down?” Well in my case, what goes down must come up, but the analogy still works the same. Nothing stays the same. Something’s always going to change. I don’t do well with change. I like schedules, lists, and consistency. But there will always be a bump in the road that seems impossible to ride over. But we are here to take on the impossible aren’t we? How boring would life be if we weren’t pushed to our limits? Or if we knew what was around every corner? This kind of reminds me of a line from Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring extended edition (yes, I am a LOTR junky!). Gandalf says to Frodo before they go into Moria, “There are many powers in this world for good or for evil. Some are greater than I am, and against some I have not yet been tested.” We see what he means when he faces the Balrog. Gandalf doesn’t come out of that battle alive. He has to sort of die first and become a new person. That new person is stronger, wiser, and more in tune to what he is supposed to do. When I got back from my bike ride I was so tired. My legs were wobbly. I was really shaken up. All I wanted to do was collapse and sink into my couch and indulge in a huge glass of ice cold water. Those first moments of fatigue feel like they are never going to end. It’s almost a sort of torture. All you can feel is the pain, the burning muscle, and the uncomfortable feeling of being sweaty and dirty. Again, you say to yourself, “That was SO not worth it! I feel like crap right now.” But as you catch your breath, your heart gets back to its normal pace, and your body starts to cool down. You feel pretty good because you say to yourself, “I did it. I didn’t quit and I didn’t let myself take the short cut.” That feeling is pretty good. When you are able to look back at something and say, “You know what? That was REALLY hard, but I know what I can do now. And now that the initial shock is gone, I can see that it was worth it.” I know that my heart is grateful to me for the work out. My calves are stronger because of that ride. And it also forced me to drink some water (which I tend not to do as often as I should). Isn’t that ironic? Getting to the end of ourselves always seems to lead us to what we were supposed be doing in the first place. Sometimes that’s really hard to admit. Perhaps that’s why people have to learn “the hard way” as they say. Maybe deep down we know what we are supposed to be doing, but we just want to make sure that we can’t do it our way first. I guess you could call it a process of elimination. Not wise at times, but effective in the long run. I get this picture of someone riding a horse. Though the horse has the legs and willpower to go where it wants there’s someone on top riding it, pulling the reigns right and left.
So anyway, back to my bike ride. It was worth it. I am wiser, stronger, and more in tune with what I am supposed to do with my body. Or at least I think I am. I guess I’ll just have to see what else God has around the corner for me. That in and of itself is exciting. There is nothing like the element of surprise.
