Who knew when I started this cycling adventure six years ago, that I would stumble into an amazingly broad experience that combines nearly all of life's pathos and ethos, is incredibly complicating and sophisticated, yet also very simple and fulfilling.
Just recently, I began to think of all of the fascinating people I have had the privilege of riding bikes with in these last six years. Some of them, I have met briefly while pedaling alongside of them on a Sunday ride never to see again, some I have become very closely linked with and still others, I run into off and on on the roads of Arizona yet seldom create plans to ride with formally. Thinking of these people one day after a particularly enjoyable ride, I realized how many stories have been shared on these wheeled adventures. It's remarkable how I have learned some of the most interesting things about people I barely know and in many cases, rarely see in any other capacity except while riding bikes. It's true, many of these rides last three, four or more hours, and as social beings, we have the compulsion to share who we are. And the various shapes that takes, is even more compelling!
Today, I rode along with a woman I have known a short time. She shares her time among Arizona and another place that's colder as many Arizonans do. She's an uplifting sort and very kind. Today, in the few moments we rode together, we talked about how so many of us have things to overcome in our lives. Like many of the people I have met while riding, she is a former runner and is now gaining her strength as a cyclist, although clearly, running still courses through her veins as her very first love. She shared with me two very distinct and very personal things. First, that years ago when her son was diagnosed with a chronic illness, she found it difficult to open her eyes in the morning, get out of bed, move through her day, live her life. Second, that a year ago, a hate crime was perpetrated on her son after they believed him and a friend to be gay and decided to beat the hell of him.
I expressed my sincere sorrow at these tragedies. I said I have come to believe that life is hard. So hard, that during the times that it isn't hard, we must drink the full elixir of every moment. She then asked me the question, Why do we think we should be immune to these difficulties of life?
I said I believed we spend those moments that life is good, expecting it to remain that way and that these painful things that come our way will happen to someone else, or not at all. All are but fairy tales that we conjure up and they keep us sane for most of the time.
This lovely woman's son is healthy today and has survived that excruciating experience. She said that while his beautiful face was repaired well, the one scar that mars his forehead doesn't trouble him. She said he told her that maybe it makes him look a little tougher. I thought about that statement today as I moved through my day. Life's trials can make us appear tougher to the people we meet after...It's when those scars we carry make us so tough that nothing can penetrate who we are, that we become damaged by our trials rather than made richer and stronger by them.
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