Time

5/21/22

Prior to the industrial revolution most babies were conceived between 2 and 4 AM while monks were completing their first set of hymns and  prayers…

I have my final three days of training rides starting tomorrow at sunrise, 60 miles each AM. I am often asked if I get bored riding these long distances. 

I have walked 4 miles every morning for the past 25 years and ridden more than 50,000 in the past 8 years. I don’t think I have experienced boredom even once. 

We divide Time into past, present, and future…it is an irony that of the three divisions only that which is most fleeting  is actual,  the other two  exist only in our imagination yet occupy 99% or our mental time. 

The added irony is that of those two which absorb so much of our thought process , one cannot be changed, and the other is guided most often by the whims of chance. 

The imagination is a powerful shaper of each of us…the science of psycho-cybernetics….a.k.a….   The Inner Game of Music, Tennis, Baseball…you pick your subject…

Don’t ever downplay how  dwelling on the past or future warps our souls…sometimes we each need a rest…

We may spend endless hours stewing over the past, and endless hours worrying about our future yet so rarely do we spend much time where we actually live…in the present. These hours of concern, looking forward, looking back move as slow as cooling lava  and consume, literally consume, hours of the fleeting moment…such a loss…

But the present…it moves like greased lightening, like a 99 mile an hour baseball passing over the plate, like a shooting star, like a rainbow in the sky…

Think of times we have been absorbed in an activity of the moment..how often do we look up to see that 1,2,3,even 4 hours have passed when it seems that we just started the task?

How often does a day dream seem to last just a minutes when so much more time has passed?

How often does time with a loved one seems to move so much faster than we like?

Time does not exist in the moment and millions of added moments in the present…the real present, not that clouded with thoughts of the past or future…add up to “ no time at all”…

A careful bike rider cannot afford to live in the past or future…only the present matters…there is in fact only billions of milliseconds of “now” ….

Hence… there is no time to get bored…

There is another time the rider experiences , that being  natural circadian rhythms, often lost in the rat race of daily life…

The past and future are psychic, while the circadian rhythm is corporeal

For thousands of years humans have lived and died by this rhythm, one which curiously enough puts us to sleep during the siesta hours and wakes us between 2 and 4 AM. Much creativity has come from these hours early morning hours…investigate when the great musicians, authors, poets, inventors, businessmen, generals, leaders, etc. did their best work. Look to where intimacy between partners was most often likely to flourish. Look to when babies were most often concieved…During these few morning hours post a deep, natural, restful sleep. 

All that was changed for the worse by the clock, the industrial revolution and finally by electricity. And of course “schedules”…

On these rides the clock has little meaning, there is no real electricity, and our only schedule is set by sunrise, sunset, and the weather of the day.

Not only has the rider entered a world of living in the pure present for 8 hours a day but so too has the unaltered circadian rhythm been allowed to resume its important place in life. How many times have I come across a rider fast asleep during siesta time?

Boredom cannot exist and natural rhythms resume control. Could it get any better for the soul?

Actually …Yes …because while all that is happening the rider finds themselves  surrounded  by “Mother Nature”  bathing all in her endless Glory day after day after day….