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Anza Borrego: The Existensialist Re-Awakening

Anza Borrego: The Existensialist Re-Awakening

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There’s been a lot of hubbub on here about the interpretation of Jesus and God, and the historical teachings of Christianity and the church. I don’t know who keeps writing those blog posts but I’m here to remind everyone that God is dead. Of course the implication there is that God was alive at some point, and he was. The picture perfect male representation of the ultimate father figure. As the father he handed out inviolable decrees about how we should live and what is right and wrong, saving us from the pesky trouble of having to reason about such trivial matters ourselves. Then something interesting began to occur, as we invented science and began applying the scientific method we began to discover natural laws. These were still of course part of God’s design but a comfort began to creep in as humanity decided that it “knew” things instead of “were pretty sure” about stuff. Then we built on top of these laws and developed the civilizations we know today: housing, government, industry. Yet still God was there as the foundational cornerstone to all ideas as even Descarte’s famous Cogito Ergo Sum declaration rests on the existence of God. As mankind developed medicine they started to forget about their impending doom, death became far removed from the certainty it was in years past and even then, the staunchest believers were sure of a better life after death anyways.

It was in this milieu of scientific advancement that Nietzsche simply declared God had died. Civilization had advanced so far and became so sure that maybe all laws were natural that we didn’t need the foundational existence of God any longer. He removed that Jenga block from the very bottom of the tower. All of a sudden concepts such as morality and purpose that had a direct connection with God were left floating in the void, unconnected to any objective source or explanation. Philosophers have then tried to perform surgery on these most ancient concepts. The purpose our lives shifted from “How to live the best life in service to God” to “Why do we live at all?”. The certainty of death and the apparent absence of God led to a depressing outlook on our existence. The existentialist thinkers eventually came to an idea though, that this mortal certainty is what brought meaning to our lives. After all it was the one objective truth that had not been decimated by the death of god. No one on this Earth can argue that we wont die, regardless of what happens after, this life will end. So death is now a foundational element on which we should rebuild our purpose. Non-existence is the antimatter on which we should measure our lives. Yet there is a problem in modern society, we forget about death. We’ve abstracted it away to farthest reaches of our minds. That’s not to say that tragedies don’t occur everyday but unless we’re personally involved we don’t see the spectre of death hanging over us every second of everyday.

That’s a very long preamble to say that the fear of death was firmly placed back into me by my bikepacking trip to the Anza Borrego desert. I haven’t written about my cycling exploits on here in a while mostly because I haven’t tackled any rides that made me scared, by choice. I chose to have adventurous but predictable rides which definitely deserve to be written about but they’ve become so numerous that it would be a disservice to each one to pick and choose which ones to highlight. The events of the weekend of March 15th 2025 though deserve to be retold. Recently I’ve taken a dip into the world of camping and specifically camping on a bike ride. I was presented with an opportunity earlier this year: 6 months of unemployment in which I wanted to ride my bike for as long and as far as possible, in which I would adventure through much of the west and maybe even Europe. To that end, camping as much as I could would be a great way to curb the expenses of such an undertaking. So I put together a setup that could carry about 50 pounds of extra weight on my bike. Enough for a tent, cooking utensils, one or two changes of clothes, food, water and maybe a laptop or books if I was really feeling sprightly.

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Suffering Exists

Suffering Exists

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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.

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca4/samma-samadhi/jhana.html

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.

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Victory In The Valley

Victory In The Valley

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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.

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Things That Scare Me

Things That Scare Me

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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.