Filed under: Roadside philosophy | Tags: anxiety, focus, life, purpose, riding
It’s interesting – for a person who wakes up in the middle of the night with panic attacks, and is brought to tears by the thought of contemplating a move to another country I’m remarkably unflappable at work and on my bike.
On my bike I’ve calmly rolled through running out of gas on a major freeway, put it in neutral or false neutral several times while shifting in fairly heavy traffic, kill it at stop lights in fairly heavy traffic and getting my front tire caught by a peculiar seam in the concrete freeways. These are things that if they happened in a car would send me into a meltdown. And have. One of my concerns with getting a motorcycle was when I drove my husband’s manual truck a couple times I had a nervous breakdown. Not being able to keep to a decent line through a curve at night and going over overpasses still give me the willies, but only enough to make me want to practice and get it right.
At work I am the queen of my domain. I control the entry/exit of the store. I say what can and can’t go into the store. I make most of the employees, including the managers, jump to my tune when I need them. Yet I’m the lowest of the low – I work crummy shifts and certainly don’t make nearly as much as the rest of the people. Yet, through the pileups of customer gear, and phones screaming for attention I know where to bend, where to stand firm and manage to stay cooler than everybody else. Even when customers repeatedly try to fake me out (Hey, lets try and get the security lady to think we’re stealing! Yea, let’s see if she’ll chase us!) or leeringly offer to let me do a full body search (such is the lot of a woman working quasi-security at a music store) I just call their bluff and win.
At home I’m pulled in so many different ways I generally can’t think straight. The dishes need to be done. The apartment hasn’t been vacuumed in a month. I’m waaay behind on my Celtic Music Nations Web site if I’m ever going to try and make that profitable. I haven’t practiced my instruments in forever – what kind of musician am I? I have a pile of books I’d like to read and two huge cross-stitching projects I’d like to finish sometime this millennia. I generally have a rat list (errands) about a mile long that take up most of my days off. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing at home, because there is no outside force telling me. Am I a wife? a musician? a writer? a hobbyist? (I could make a very happy life going nothing but my art, cross-stitching and gardening). At some level I know I’m all of them, but how does it all work together?
Maybe that’s the parrallel – I know my purpose at work and on a bike.
At work I have two purposes: do my job so that I stay employed and earn a pay check, and do my job well because I enjoy seeing customers leave happy and I enjoy helping out my co-workers.
On a bike I have two purposes: enjoy myself and keep my body parts as far away from the asphalt and the stupid cages as possible.
At home I have too many purposes and no cohesive thread.
Maybe if I get a better grip – or loosen my grip, and just exist it will make existing easier. Boy doesn’t that sound like some mind-warping Zensunni statement from Frank Herbert’s “Dune” books.
The next thing is probably to gain enough self discipline to set and stick to a purpose for certain times. If I’m in bed I should be asleep or spending quality time with my husband – not destroying my sanity.
Here’s hoping that learning to just exist on a bike – focusing on the here and now – will transfer over to living the rest of my life.
To be is to do- Socrates
To do is to be- Sartre
Do be do be do- Sinatra
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