The Need To Get Somewhere

When I ride my bicycle, the world in my immediate peripheral vision slows down. This slowdown allows my mind to imprint the local shops, the street potholes, the road crevices, and the pedestrians waiting at bus stops.

I also notice how anxious the drivers around me are. They fidget at stoplights and tensely grip their phones as they look for excuses to check the glowing screens. They scan text messages and fumble through apps, their minds constantly expecting something.

These drivers engage in an endless stop-and-go, from traffic light to traffic light. Like pinballs in a machine, they dart from spot to spot, at the disposal of blinking lights and street signs. They hate it, and they honk and curse, though they are part of an endless stream of gas guzzlers wanting to get from point A to point B. And so their eyes dart from app to text to clock to road, waiting for what’s next. They blast music to minimize the stress. But it’s stressful, and it’s daily.

They have to get somewhere, and this need to get somewhere renders the present moment unacceptable for them.

Society tells them that a hypothetical future place will assuage their problems. There are consequences to not getting somewhere. So they honk and curse and shove breakfast quickly down their throats and rush through the Starbucks drive-through so that they can swig a latte.

Where are they going that is worth the hustle, the damning of the present and the need to escape it?

To offices, where they will sit and pour through spreadsheet metrics and a new litany of emails asking for favors.

To school, where they will dread grades and the teachers who are the judges, juries, and executioners of their future potential high paying jobs. A future that could quite possibly involve an office and a screen with spreadsheets and metrics. A future of more hustle, because even when the job is landed, there are always potential consequences just around the corner that can destroy everything.

Yet these drivers rush to meetings with colleagues they generally don’t like, over subjects they care about insofar as caring will pay the bills.

Is the present moment really worth sacrificing for such a future?

We tell ourselves we have no choice, that the need to get somewhere is imperative.

So we can buy a bigger house.

So we can get the job that impresses those that we know.

So we can pay off loans.

So we can have a higher salary.

So we can buy more presentable clothes.

So we can be more, because if we can be more we can be enough.

But what if our current state of being is already enough?

What if being in this world is enough, and being ourselves is enough?

The reason I took on cycling is because when I’m on a bicycle, I lose my sense of urgency. I’m not timing anything, or chasing anything, or trying to prove anything. I don’t give a damn about my heart rate or my calorie count or my mileage. The future be damned, the present is enough. The only thing that matters is my pedaling, my breathing, my immediate surroundings. The air feels crisp and I can appreciate it. My sweat wicks away in a breeze and it all feels more authentic.

When the impatient racers around me feel the need to roar forward, to check their myriad distractions in the mirror at stoplights, to honk, to hurry for a drive-through latte that costs them a portion of their work day…

I accept that this was once me, and sometimes still is me, and I hope they buy a bike one day.