Riders and Passengers

I've covered a lot of ground riding early mornings and evenings and lunch hours, and I've taken a lot of new roads to a lot of different venues in which to do my very cerebral day job. And yet, even with all those roads and all those miles, there is still something about the 'unexplored rest' that keeps me wanting to ride. Ride. Ride.

Every mile in the saddle, even if I've traveled that same mile dozens of times before, seems somehow new - reborn to me. Maybe it's not about the destination, it's about the present moment - about the ride itself as it unfolds and, with it, my experience and my own 'present moment' gets unfolded along with the ride.

Somehow riding parallels life, and with every ride I get to see that more and more. It's starting to make sense to me.

You can choose never to go anywhere. You can be a passenger or a driver. You can be a driver or a rider. At each level, life takes on an intensity and the penalty for deciding poorly becomes all too clear. But so do the rewards.

Some folks accept going nowhere, being stuck or anchored down by the prison of their own mind. Some crave adventure but prefer to be passengers, living life in the back seat. Now both driver and passenger can be on the same open road. But really, the passenger is still only a passenger, being driven forward by the whims of others, unable to contribute meaningfully to either the process or the outcome.

What about the driver behind the wheel? Sure, the driver gets to decide a direction, but stays entirely removed from the experience. Now I'm not talking about the elite race car driver or track racer. I'm talking about the other 99.9% of humanity, motoring along in glass and steel cages. Like all the overpaid corporate middlemen of today or trust funders living matchbox lives on mountain tops, most stay stuck in their head, stuck experiencing life while fully removed from (and often afraid of) the realness of it all. They look in rear view mirrors to see who's behind them, in side view mirrors to determine the competition, and through a windshield wondering when it'll rain.

Only the rider has both a say in where the open road takes them *and* is fully alive along the way, saturated by the experience in all its richness. Riding is independence and freedom embodied by an activity that empowers the will and liberates the mind.

Riding is not about the pursuit of happiness - it *is* happiness.

That's the difference. That's living. And that's also a lesson on how to live, regardless if you own a bike or not.