“Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.” - Erick Fromm
Let me begin by sharing a secret - I cry often, all the time. So much brings me to tears. I’m overwhelmed and overcome by the smallest of things - like right now, a bird flirting around on the table as I write this …
My eyes constantly well with tears, nothing makes sense but it is very, very precious and necessary. The world is unsteady, I’m a drunk on a drunk boat but in this instability, vulnerability, gentle rocking, so alive. My tear ducts don’t work anymore, the tears just flow (and those who know me, know it is a biological fact - can’t control my tears, the muscles and nerves have given out).
I used to suppress the tears, this full, sanguine feeling, I’d push them back down. But now, I am like water and I let them flow. We, you, me, are vessels for something we know naught, can only vaguely imagine. Even science has no idea.
Let yourself be carried away by your feelings, the experiences of being alive … have the courage, we spend too much of our lives struggling, swimming upstream. We spend too much time under the thumb of convention and culture and habit.
I undertook the journey across America and Canada for many reasons.
One. I just wanted a challenge. I’ve always been one in love with testing my limits. Those who know my athletic background will remember my records, wins and drive to test myself. I wanted to see if that was still alive within me.
Two. Route 66, the “Mother Road” seemed like a perfect way to experience America. Its fascinating history, its importance to our age of the automobile, its dying and transforming nature were a door which my mind could enter America and understand our current times. It would allow me to encounter people on the ground, human to human without all the B.S. of fear and politics and labeling, “othering”.
Three. So many of my writer heroes have made the pilgrammage across America. Think of course of Kerouac - On The Road. Then there is Twain who traveled the continent and wrote about his people. Henry Miller - The Air Conditioned Nightmare. And of course, not a travelogue but a song - Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. I’ve always been fascinated by and wishing to understand America - this journey was that opportunity. I thought so much about Alexis de Tocqueville, his own adventure and observations about America - so many which still stand.
Long, too long America,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn’d from joys and prosperity only,
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling
not,
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are - Walt Whitman
Four. On a practical level - I wanted to show the cycling world that you don’t need to spend $1,000s of dollars on a bike to get out there and travel on this two-wheeled wonder. Walmart or a bike from your local fleamarket would do. It was my f-you to the whole spandex wearing, $500 Oakley, $1,000 headset crowd out there (but I love you too!) … cycling should be cheap, accessible, and a priority to our world. I’m sad to report I discovered it ain’t.
Finally, and most importantly, this journey was about becoming alive to the world. Diving in naked and alive. Letting the tears pour and the happiness abound. Be natural, embrace the fragile imperative, be vulnerable but courageous. It was my search for meaning, a struggle to be, to celebrate myself and my life.
"One must imagine Sisyphus happy" - Albert Camus
The bike trip was my own surreal effort to not make art but BE ART. I am a work of art, all else I produce is only a symptom, effluent of my beingness. I’m a sculpture chipping and chiseling away at my own stone, to reveal the true form therein.
Every journey begins with a thought. An impulse and an illumination. It is driven by desire, like anything that is true in life, true to life. Pure desire to be - not to have. My journey too - I began by “diving in” and seeing what would happen. As a runner, I’ve always said, the hardest part of any workout is putting on your shoes. True here too.
One morning, I got an obscure message from an old high school friend about the death of a person we went to school with. Richard, he wasn’t my friend. I remembered him though, he was hunched, almost disfigured face, always bullied, picked on. I cried. His birthday was the same as mine, so too, his age. Out the door I went. I wasn’t going to wait a moment longer and let this trip be just something I’d wished I’d done.
The late, great philosopher Paul Tillich (a cryer too) called it - The Courage To Be (not to have). Erick Fromm called it in Escape From Freedom - “the freedom to”, to live filling yourself with meaning, in being, without fear, open, pursuing experiences - as oppossed to the belief system most people operate in - “the freedom from”, one that is fear ridden, possessive, having, non-creative, isolating and routine perscribing.
I will end this as I began with another secret. This journey was deeply about my own wrestling match with death. I started in LA but finished facing death, the impending death, frailty of my mother, in the farmhouse where I was raised and became. My brother on his hospital death bed, having passed just before writing this - thank god I got to see him and hold his hand. My tears flow …
The journey gave me time to come to terms with the existential fact of life: our own time here is brief. Too brief for war, hate, death, superficial nonsense, spite, shame and all that other horrible stuff.
We are on a stopwatch. And to be human, natural, alive in this brief time, we must choose to be positive. Choose to encounter people as people, without all the baggage we usually do. Like the Guatemaltecos I’m among, smiling, even as you, they, struggle like Syssiphus up the hill of life/death. Treat all people with dignity and respect, reject the lost, the manipulaters and haters. Neither victim nor executioner - as said Camus.
And yes, finally celebrate yourself!
Further Suggested Reading:
Eric Fromm - Forward to Summerhill
Paul Tillich - A Review of Courage To Be.
Camus - Short Story - The Guest.
Beautiful essay about Camnus’ story (100% what I think too.
Whitman - Leaves of Grass
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