Day 5 - On Struggle & Solitude

No journey is difficult. Is living difficult? Because if it is difficult, then the result is certain---which is go to the highest mountain and jump off. If you can't handle living, there are no drugs in the world that are going to cure you. If you're feeling depressed, then get undepressed.

Our struggles are not outside of us, they are in us. Our struggle with our spouses, jobs, kids, they are all within us. And it's not that you choose that you want to be one thing or the other--it's already been decided for you.

Pessimistic view, pessimistic thought, pessimistic outcome.

If you can't cheer yourself up, who will? If you don't love yourself, who will? If you don't understand yourself, who will?

Solitude on this cycling journey, being alone, being on a mountain, and moving forward, I don't see cars, trucks, anything. I realize how alone one is.

Alone is not lonely. Alone is just you with yourself.

When you learn--and it can only be for a moment--when you learn that you are vulnerable, that you are not in control, you will be able to see the images of you.

One of the things that I have seen are these trucks. Not one, but many trucks, pass by. I have two feet pedaling, and I realize that I am not in charge. If it ends for me there, it ends for me there.

And so, in whose hands am I? In those of the men and women who drive these trucks and cars? Because clearly I am not in control.

This is the solitude that I'm talking about.

You can't live remembering everything, or putting things into practice. It's just not the way life is lived. The moment it enters your mind, it's already recorded. Why do you want to live life practicing something you already know? Why not live what you don't know? Or what's unknown? Let yourself go, live, be free of fear.

And move closer to yourself--to knowing me, the ego.

Day 4 - Cyn's Thoughts in Arizona

This morning, I woke up so thankful for a full night's sleep, into actual morning---the kind that follows a sunrise, not the kind that pursues it, as we have been doing for the first three days of this journey.

Today, even though we're still in desert climes, I'm thankful for the wind, so Luna can pump his legs across Rte. 40 to Flagstaff.

We're both awed by the relentless peace, the beauty of the landscape, and how close the fluffy, white and silver cloud puffs float above the trees. They travel slowly, too. Like us.

There is a certain pace to living, isn't there?

And when we're not in synch with that pace, then we call it life, because we don't really feel like we're living. Seems like we're either rushing to get ready for it, rushing to get ahead of it, or waiting to get ready for it, or waiting because we think we got ahead of it.

Day 4 - Cyn's Thoughts, Waiting on I-40 to Flagstaff

It feels like we've been doing this cross-country journey for weeks now, but it's only been four days.

Indeed, hitting the road has taken an entirely different tone than I originally thought it would. I had page-turning thoughts of Kerouac and Hesse, but instead, there's less anticipation for the future and more of ... just settling into the present moment. (It sounds obvious as an observation to me now, as I write it, but it just wasn't so obvious to me in anticipation of this trip.)

In one of the videos I posted to this blog, I muse that I'm "cool" for a crazy cross-country cyclist like my sweetheart, because I'm like a traveling rest stop.

In our car, I drive the highway for five or 10 miles, and then I wait.

Our white Ford Escape is fully stocked with such foods as bananas, salt, bread, crackers, spaghetti with Nutella, roasted bell peppers and tomato salsa (the latter two made possible by our Gilroy friends.)

This white "bus", as we lovingly call it, also contains bandaids, butt butter and body lotion for all of those emergency body care needs.

So, I'm needed. And it's surprising how much comfort that thought gives me in this big expansive world that we live in.

Perhaps that was the miracle I was supposed to find. (I suspect that even if I do find the miracle, it will somehow elude me as that defining bell rings. But in this moment now, it's kind of nice for me to find some purpose--any purpose--for the right here, right now.)

Ironically, I'm finding my raison d'etre by sitting, in the car, on the shoulder of the highway, in the heat, along a winding ribbon of asphalt.

In short, not "doing" very much at all, but waiting.