Last week, for four days I was on my bike, enjoying an annual get together with my two best buddies from Uni. These days, all three of us live in places that are roughly a day’s cycle ride apart, so we roll between the homes, together.
We had the inaugural event last year and enjoyed it so much, we’ve committed to doing it every year. It’s been in the diary for ages, we’d all been really looking forward to it, it takes a fair bit of planning to execute, we all had things we’d learned from last year and the amount of group chat slowly escalated, as the day grew closer. Weather, equipment, food, timings… it all had to be discussed.
And then we were there, doing the thing we’d planned! Here we are – look at those happy faces
😃
When you’re outdoors, engaged in lengthy physical pursuits, it’s quite easy to observe the mind, and you may not be all that surprised to learn that mine didn’t really behave any differently from how it does when I’m sat at my desk. So it:
- tried to predict the future, and
- guessed how I’d feel in each of these imaginary scenarios.
All of it pure fiction. The product of a Giles Ego Construct 📦
And I suppose what was different about being outdoors, on two wheels, with my homies, was that whenever that process was going on, it was pulling me away from the experience of … well, being outdoors, on two wheels with my homies.
🤷🏻♂️
The very thing I’d come for!
The tiniest selection for you:
- When’s the next hill?
- Will we stay together?
- Will this wind slow us down?
- What if we overlap wheels?
- What time are we likely to arrive at our destination?
- What are we going to be eating?
- I can imagine how good that first hamstring stretch is going to be.
- What’s it going to be like watching the Giro d’Italia on telly, later?
- Ooh, look at that – that would make a really good photo!
- The forecast for tomorrow is worse than today – how will we manage that?
- There’s that really nice bit of road coming up, that I remember from last time.
- What’s it going to be like when it’s my turn on the front, in the wind, again?
- I’m looking forward to the next coffee stop, they had that really nice cake there last time.
- Road’s rough here, I wonder how easy it would be to get these tyres off, if I puncture.
On and on and on and on and on and on and on it goes—it never stops!—and it’s really subtle. In fact it’s so subtle, it’s almost invisible.
It forms the fabric of our lives and we take it for granted and it looks like it’s actually life itself.
When really, all it’s doing is distracting us from life.
So every now and again, when it went quiet and each of us was potentially pondering something other than the reality of right here, right now (I know I certainly was), I’d bug the hell out of my companions by yelling,
“THIS IS IT, GUYS!!!”
(Yup, it really is fun spending time with Giles. He’s not annoying in the slightest 😆)
But it was true.
Here we are, doing the thing we’ve been planning for nigh on 11 months.
This is IT.
None of us get to actually experience those futures that that the mind is busy creating, here and now; the picture it’s painting of The Bike Tour and what it’s going to be like. No, because:
This IS it.
And when we’re battling a ferocious sidewind, atop an exposed hillside, a fine rain coming at us horizontally, cold and wet and we’re all looking forward to being back down in the valley, riding under the blanket of that blue sky we can see ahead, but no…
THIS is it.
If we’re not careful, we can live the whole of our lives with our attention on something else.
So whatever you’re up to right now… today… this weekend… next week… this year… for the rest of your life…
Whatever is going on:
THIS IS IT.
💟
Giles
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Giles P Croft
You see that cow? That's you, that is.