Cycle-ogical Insight
#2
HYPOTHESIS:
Is
bicycling a form of therapy? Professional counselors would probably say no way, but whenever I ride alone, which
is 90% of the time, I mentally talk to either myself or someone else. With each
pedal stroke, part of me descends deeper into unconscious terrain, led there by
this silent dialogue. As self-awareness takes care of practical concerns—road
conditions, traffic lights, darting dogs, weather, sights—intuition approaches
depths where repression pools beneath a hard layer foreclosing further access.
It’s amazing, the number of images that percolate up from those depths. In this
way the physical effort of bicycling stimulates the psychological unveiling of
the bicyclist, giving him a free double-dose of personal cleansing and
“growth.”
DIAGNOSIS:
I
ride for practical as well as emotional reasons. Yesterday by accident I became
aware of a latent emotional motive behind many, perhaps most (all?) of my local
rides these past three years. To wit: I’ve been looking for someone—more
exactly, looking for her automobile, meaning, by extension, for her, since
naturally she’d be driving it. All along, this motive has had a corollary: I’d
like to be seen by her on my bicycle, proving that I’m still out there on the
same bike braving the same roads, as if this would impress her somehow. Yes, I
know where this person works and lives. So what. I have no interest in going
near those places. I avoid “her” roads. Despite this, no matter where I ride in
the area, I find myself scanning all cars for hers. And occasionally I see
it!—feel a gut-wrenching zing . . . and then realize it’s not hers after all.
Right color, right model, right year—wrong stickers, wrong plates.
Yesterday
I heard that a few months ago she had in fact sold her car. She has been
driving a different one ever since.
Upon
hearing this news I was troubled, not being able to put my finger on the
reason. As I said above: the motive was latent. Because I hadn’t been fully
aware of the stymied desire, I couldn’t immediately understand why I was
downcast for a good hour or two. Finally, in the middle of a ride, deep in
self-reflection, I understood.
I
have been looking for something that doesn’t exist.
Worse,
it hasn’t existed for a long time.
I
have been wasting my time.
For
three years I have pedaled my bike in a Dr. Zhivago-like search, all in vain.
The bicycle was the means by which my folly was revealed.
CONCLUSION:
For
the time being, my knowing there’s nothing to look for anymore may take some
spice out of my rides. The unexplored motive, the unspoken urge will need time
to fade away. But while my solo rides may lose an edge that I’d been sharpening
on each trip, to no avail, they will become healthier all around. A counselor
would have pointed out my self-delusion, leading me to some kind of recovery or
closure of the issue related to it. My bicycle helped me do the same. Although
the bicycle isn’t the equivalent of a well-trained health care provider,
bicycling itself is therapeutic. On the way to physical fitness you, like me,
have probably bicycled yourself to mental and emotional health too.
Roadysseus
1.28.15
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