I’ve talked about suffering before but lately I’ve been reading up on Siddhartha Gautama’s teachings. That’s the Buddha, not to be confused with a buddha. His lessons can probably be summarized as suffering exists, and suffering can be overcome. Today I wont be waxing on about him though, that will come in a few weeks, I’m here to talk about physical suffering. More specifically suffering for 14 hours on a bicycle.
Maybe it’s not fair to say I was suffering for 14 hours because I certainly started off feeling elated, undercut with just a touch of dread maybe. Certainly, even in the midst of the worst pain I felt spurts of joy as well. Delirious, pure joy such as the one described by the buddha as the second jhāna of Right Concentration:
Furthermore, with the stilling of directed thoughts & evaluations, he enters and remains in the second jhana: rapture and pleasure born of composure, unification of awareness free from directed thought and evaluation — internal assurance. He permeates and pervades, suffuses and fills this very body with the rapture and pleasure born of composure. There is nothing of his entire body unpervaded by rapture and pleasure born of composure.
On these long rides it’s hard not to consider them a form of meditation, yet I’ve never really experienced the banishing of thought on my bike until this day.
I blew past my previous max distance by a resounding 24 miles. The total elevation ended up coming up just under 5500′ which is about 500 merciful feet less than the route was described. Still it’s the most I’ve climbed on one of these long rides. I completed the route one hour and a half before the cutoff. Looking back on the ride itself, my previous post sounds childish (maybe it did anyways) with how strongly I managed to finish. Yet even the night before I was still in the throes of anxiety…
I rolled up to the Simi Valley Hotel I was staying at with Daniel around 5pm. I was immediately beset by concern because they had multiple “No bicycles permitted in building” signs plastered all over the entrances and windows. I wondered how this could have been such a recurring problem that it warranted such aggressive signage. I imagined Simi Valley being swarmed by flocks of cyclists at hotels but I never saw a single other one besides Daniel and the rest of the randonneurs I was heading out with. One thing bicycling has reinforced in me is that sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness than for permission, I believe they call this exercising your privilege. If you’re in a shady neighborhood you grab your bike and walk right into the store; If you’re at red light with a weight sensor and no cars for miles then you just roll on; if you feel unsafe on the shoulder of a road you just take up the whole lane instead. I gathered my nerves and walked right in with my bicycle already mentally preparing my defense: “Your website never said no bikes allowed”. The lobby was completely empty, I leaned my bike out of sight of the reception, checked in, and went to my room after the worker walked to the back room.
I was listening to Jonny Greenwood’s latest score and I am ashamed to admit that often times I am moved by the music, having never watched the film. I definitely intend to watch Spencer, but my opportunity to see it in theatres was lost amongst the shuffle of life. I’ll report back here once I do but until then this piece highlights something I want to call a beautiful dread. I lack the knowledge of musical theory to really describe it but there is the challenge and response at the beginning, followed by an unceasingly ascending fugue that is anchored by some devastatingly minor chords. He is channeling J.S. Bach at his most contrapuntal here, which in the film is no doubt a reference to the baroque excess of the royal lineage, but for the person sitting here listening to it without knowledge of its origins it fills me with a promise of greatness and an anxiety of failure. The fugue is especially suited for this because it’s layering of melodic lines represents the many pressures, demands, and thoughts circling through my head at these times of fear. Yet undeniably, on the whole, it’s a beautiful, fragile piece and although there is an undercurrent of anguish it strives upward and onward like many dancers who do not notice they are inching towards a great precipice as they are too preoccupied with their partners.
But the song alone is not responsible for my current malaise. This Sunday I’m doing a brevet, a 200km bicycle ride, I’m afraid of: 124 miles and 6000 feet of elevation which for me is no walk in the park. If it goes well it will be both the highest elevation and the furthest distance I have ever covered in a single ride. I have 13 hours on this earth to finish, which may very well be a lot until you realize I practice the way of the tortoise when it comes to these large efforts. Yet why am I afraid? Not finishing a bicycle ride will hardly be the worst thing to ever happen to me. It is my soul that would suffer, the bitter defeat of not achieving my goal, however small, is a blow to my ego and confidence. I have employed every trick in the book to rationalize away this fear:
“I’ve done 100 miles what’s 24 more?”
“I’ve done 5400 feet of climbing in 70 miles, 6000 spread out over 124 miles that’s easy.”
“My friend Daniel is doing 370 miles that day, he is surely better than me but even I can keep up on his last 124 miles can’t I?”
“Worse comes to worse I can just stop and quit, it’s my choice. I can get picked up.”
“If I feel like I wont finish I can cut the route short, I am the master of my own destiny after all.”
“Even if I don’t finish maybe I will still have gone further than ever before.”
This is my personal fugue, playing endlessly in my head leading up to the ride this Sunday. There is the anticipation of pain, but also the sweet dreams of victory. Will I come back here next week hence and regale you with the tale of my adventure, mission accomplished? Or will I publish a post about Icarus and how he journeyed too close to the sun? This is what Kierkegaard refers to as Anxiety, the dizziness of freedom, for after all as much as I like to hand off the responsibility of being on this ride (“I paid $20, I have to do it now”) it is my choice alone to put myself through this gauntlet, a test of my mental and physical fortitude. Taking that responsibility is unmasking my true being and rejecting the many excuses and opportunities to exit it that my inauthentic self whispers to me is part of the challenge. So there we have it: challenge, response, and now the perpetual silent second before the journey.
