Biking and Life

Biking. Love it. Being hit by a car, or ‘wiping out’ on gravel, not so much.

However, let’s focus on the positive!

After some time with the nurse...

The swelling was massive!

Why do I enjoy biking?

What has biking taught me?

Because it keeps me moving, it keeps my heart, lungs and muscles working, it gets my lymphatic system pumping. In other words, it keeps me fit. It also helps that it burns off calories and allows the consumption of more cake—guilt free!

I also enjoy the freedom of biking. I love that I can get out early and bike across town, powered by nothing more than my own body. I love the sound of the birds. I love the quiet of the roads while the rest of the city sleeps. I love
watching the dawn as I stand at the shore of the ocean. I love the few hills I tackle on the way home. I love the way I can push myself hard on the final ten kilometres. I love the feeling of getting home with ‘nothing left in the tank’.

Biking has taught me that I get out of the ride what I put in to the ride. Like life, the more I give, the more I get. The more I devote myself to my path, the more I get back from life. The harder I work on myself, the more I gain. 

Just like a long bike ride, I will cover more distance if I just keep pedaling—in fact there are many rides where I have given all I had to give and all I can do is tell myself ‘Just keep pedalling.’ As with life, when we feel we have given all we had to give, just keep breathing, just keep taking one step after another. We have more within us that we realise, and only when pushed do we discover this.

Too often people quit while they are still comfortable within their safety zone. That is not how growth happens. Growth happens outside our comfort zone.

Boundaries are only ever as far back as we have pushed them. Why not push them back further.

Sometimes we face challenges in life, something that knocks us back, We have a choice in how to respond. For me, after the gravel ‘wipe out’ I took time to heal, to nurture myself, to be aware of how my body was feeling, so that I felt the strength coming back. I was aware of the pain and weakness in my body, and aware of the easing of the pain and the returning strength. I learnt a lot about my body. 

*******

After the gravel 'wipe out' I had a massive swelling on the side of my leg. Within hours the bruising started, and over the next days and weeks I catalogued the development of the bruising It was so impressive I did a post on facebook 'Fifty Shades of Bruising'.

There was a stretch of concrete along the road, I don't really know why, perhaps to drain away water when it rained. Whatever the reason, I think the last picture shows that that was what I slammed down on, because I had a nice line along the leg! 

When I got hit by the car (two months before the gravel 'wipe out') I did not have any visible injuries, just severe muscle sprains and I could not use my hand or move my shoulder and was limping around.

You can see where I hit that stretch of concrete on the road...

Friendship

I don’t look at friendships as in ‘what can I get out of this?’ I look at friendships as in ‘what can I give?’

The most rewarding bonds I have with people are the ones where we both contribute to the friendship.

There are, of course, those relationships that are (to put it bluntly) selfish, where the other person is only every after something, be it someone to explain their life and help them, or someone to rant on and on to about their life. But they don’t give, emotionally, to the relationship.

As much as we might want to talk on and on about our life, our woes, and to complain endlessly about everything…the less we take time to listen. And if we are always focussing the conversation on ourselves, then that is the only area that gets explored—and we stay within the small confines of that conversation.

The greatest friend ships you will ever have are the ones where both sides want to give to the relationship, to help, to listen, to support, affirm, embrace, and to just unconditionally love and accept the other person…but also be the one to say ‘actually, I think you’re just being a pratt.’

For me, life is about people. It’s all about people and relationships. And if I have reached the end of my lifetime and not truly loved … then I have wasted a vast opportunity. And so, when it is one of those beautiful friendships … I give it all I have to give, all the love in my heart. To do otherwise is to cheat both my friend and myself. I won’t do that.

Live with PASSION!

It is time to live with PASSION and PERSONALITY!!! To do anything less is to live life less fully!

Family, friends and society all demand things from us, behaviors, procedures, manners, interactions, tact, etc etc etc. But in trying to answer everyone else’s requirements/demands, we never really discover who we are.

And so, starting today, starting the moment I began to realize this: I will live with all the passion, personality and love that I am.

We are each unique, and were never meant to be replicas of a divine being, but rather us living as a divine being. Me, and all that I am, my sense of humor, my personality, my passions, all living as a divine being. It is all about how we live.

I have met many people who…to be honest…they live such a pale life, when there is such magnificent, colorful passion and joy just waiting to burst through. They are living in pastel, when the full pallet of color is available to them.

Look back at your life, and see (particularly for women) how you changed your behavior because you wanted to fit in, to be accepted, to be liked, to be respected, to be envied, to make people proud, to impress, to fit in with a partner’s friends and associates. You will see, time and time again, how you ‘played a role’. This is why so many of us don’t really know who we are.

The funny thing for me is…when I am writing I know exactly who my characters are, and when I am writing I know that that is who and what I am: a writer.

I have had a tendency to behave conservatively with other people, and that stops now. I went to dinner a few weeks ago, dressed up in my jeans, high heeled red boots, and black leather jacket, and I was just me in all my glory for the night. And you know what? It felt great. I talked to the people sitting around me and we all had a great time. I think it was a better night because I was being my passionate self and not the conservative ‘Mr X’s wife’.

So, here’s my suggestion. Let’s all start living with a whole lot more passion and personality. Stop hiding, stop being conservative.

My Dad and I often have the discussion of ‘characters’ and he (being born in 1929) worked with men who had survived WWII. Some of these men were real characters! They had been through something so brutal, but they knew what was important. Today’s corporate world and bosses are all about money and profit, and making themselves feel important. It’s power games, and they have never ever had to truly test themselves in battle. And don’t you dare talk to me of board room battles, because they are not battles. Compared to a war, to life and death struggles, they are petty arguments amongst power hungry people. That’s all.

People who have faced their mortality return home changed by that experience. Whilst we who have not faced our mortality are still buying into this plastic false, surface living life.

No more!!!

I’m tired of talking to people who are afraid to fully live. Let’s live, with passion and personality!! Don’t be afraid to be you.

Forget the pastel colors, forget the beige life. Let us live the full pallet of colors!!!