Forty minutes of stopping and starting, re-routing, frustration and attempting to just breathe. With a dull internal pain I'm almost certain is due to self-inflicted abuse and skin that shivers then sweats. Definitely in my top ten of worst traffic experiences. A thrown in the towel brain and arms that can barely hold the steering wheel, exhausted muscles all around. Including the muscle that is my heart. I was in a dire state, the scraps of mantras I could remember trying to save me internally and externally. To no avail. I had just about given up. Convinced it was now in my top five of worst traffic experiences. I just needed to survive; it would all be okay when I got home. And once I was home I would just go to sleep. Cancelling yoga. Cancelling any effort. Cancelling life. Just for a while. Just as I got home.
This was all happening subconsciously.
The pain in my side was real but the rest was covered with denial. To fully admit the source of the pain would be to acknowledge just how fucked up I am.
And then it happened.
Closer to the almost home stretch - the breaking point of wanting something so bad but it being just out of reach.
I was going home, downhill. Easy enough.
He was going somewhere far, with only uphill ahead. Hard as fuck.
At first I saw the rickety skinny wheels of his bicycle and thought about how old they must be. If they had ever broken, been fixed and if so, how?
Then I thought of what lay ahead for those rickety skinny wheels. Arm-fucking-strong Avenue. Did the bicycle know that it was surely doomed? Too steep a hill, too long a climb and too hard a journey. But then the bicycle became more than faulty looking equipment. It become more than a second hand piece of shit. It became more than something for me to scrutinze over so.
There are no words to describe the human being that rode that bicycle. So I just wept.
As my gaze lifted higher to his face the tears automatically welled and released down my ungrateful face. My face being the complete opposite to this man's face. His face was that of life, of gratitude and determination that beamed through every pore and circled his head like a helmet.
He knew what was ahead. He knows what he has to do. What made me cry is that he still does it.
There's a pureness that radiates around someone like him... spectacularly emanating strongly enough from him to be able to touch me so deeply.
I'm usually impermeable.
But this man was life and I let him be who he is, do what he was doing and my God was he great at it. He will never know that a white girl in her car was so incredibly moved in stand still traffic.
My thoughts were yelling of his impending doom. My ego was screaming at its shittyness. My self was too blind to ever consider what he would have seen had he looked at me.
No doubt it would've been in my top three of worst faces that he'd have seen.
Why am I unconsciously tormenting myself? So much more than any occasional hour long traffic nightmare, I've turned my life into traffic. I'll get where I'm going but I'm sure as fuck not enjoying it.
The stopping and starting, re-routing, frustration and attempting to just breathe. The mornings, the evenings, the days. The weeks, the months and the years.
Perhaps if I get a bicycle I can be like the man and avoid traffic and just be happy.
But that is not truth. That is thought and expectation and grappling for something else that is me.
No matter what the form of transport is, there is unavoidable effort required. There is unavoidable determination needed. There is unavoidable life that is meant to be accepted. But the most important thing in all of it is that you talk yourself out of your lies. Out of the norms, out of these preconceived notions that you won't make another minute. Because you will. The question is how, why and who.
How - you walk, you cycle, you swim, you drive. You move. Internally as well. Shift yourself. Shift your thoughts.
Why - you have a purpose, you have a home, a place to be. You are also already here. Exactly where you are.
Who - you have a self to be. The choice is natural but can be done wisely, within a second. A sixty minute test of traffic. A week, a month and a year. You have a lifetime to be who you are, keep yourself emanating spectacularly enough to touch someone. To touch the world positively. The who is the hardest - the Arm-fucking-strong of hills. If you persist with the how and the why, eventually the who will be stronger and no traffic will change that.
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