The Only Constant is Change

I was in the office building on a weekday morning hurrying towards the coffee lounge and feeling both lethargic and unmotivated when I ran into an old friend, Donald, whom I hadn’t spoken to in awhile. We’re in different departments.

Years back, while cycling to work, I’d often greet him on the road as he rode his e-bike to work. We biked to work in any condition: rain, sleet, and snow, it didn’t matter. I guess we were kindred spirits, the only two who did this regularly, with a story we shared and yet no one around us would ever understand. You get to know the other cyclists fast when there’s only a few of you in the area.

“You still riding the e-bike in?” I asked him.

“No. Not since they added the security gates,” he said. And neither have I. The gates occlude all of the easiest bike paths, leaving only a dangerous and high-traffic street as access to the building.

“I hate cycling on Campus Parkway,” I said. There are some drivers who would nonchalantly hit a cyclist if no one was around to see it.

“Yeah,” he said. “And my bike kept getting caught in the turnstile.” I hadn’t thought about that, as I hadn’t actually tried to carry my bike through. The irony is there’s actually a bike rack inside the security gates, but it’s now impossible to get a bike to it!

“I miss those days, cycling in. The world slows down for you.”

“And you feel like you can do anything. People say it’s impossible, but you do it anyways.”

“You bike to work when it’s sleeting and your hands are numb, and you’re thinking what the hell is wrong with me. But you also know that you can struggle and win.”

I miss those days, seeing Donald on the road as dawn winks at the horizon and slowly eviscerates the darkness. However, the only constant is change, and that chapter has closed. I realize that I’ll probably never see Donald on the road again and feel melancholy.

An e-mail circulates about a company “green initiative,” and the “need to recycle!” I think about Donald, unable to carry his e-bike through the security gate’s turnstiles, and I think about how everyone looked at us as lunatics when we parked our bikes in the morning.