This isn’t about religion or even spirituality as much as it is about practical, every day matters of happiness and contentment. The background here is that I’m one of those annoying atheists, preoccupied with science, who eschews supernatural explanations for even the most remarkable phenomena. This can be leave me at odds with friends who are less sure about what makes the universe tick, but spawns some really enjoyable (for me) conversations about how we, as lone organisms in an ocean of swirling space, make our way and find meaning.
Comfortable as I am with my views as regards the nature of existence, I think it’s fair to say that those of us who hew so closely to the scientific line often suck the awe, wonder and even joy out of the human experience, almost as a reflex. Call it defensiveness. Or frustration. The sorts of feelings anyone has when their beliefs are questioned.
So I’ve resolved to be more amazed.
The truth is that what we know is nothing when compared to what we don’t, and even if we believe that cogent explanations are possible, it would be churlish not to look upon the mysteries of the universe with mouth agape and/or plastered with a stupid grin. A stupid grin is probably the correct reaction to the human experience.
Last week I was climbing up a hillside in a Vermont on my mountain bike, because that’s what there is to do on a bike in the Green Mountain State, when my gaze fell to the trailside littered with fresh leaf fall. By some trick of variable moisture, the birch leaves had taken on an array of colors, yellow, red and gray, which laid one upon the other gave this beautiful mosaic effect. And I smiled, and I realized then that I didn’t have to hate the climb to love the descent. I could love them both, because after all there I was on a bike in a forest, which is less a collection of flora and fauna than it is a single restless, striving organism.
Amazing.
My legs were good that day, a miracle unto itself. They answered every call I made to turn my front wheel uphill. Somehow my body turned two pancakes, three pieces of bacon, a small mound of scrambled eggs and the single, stray Oreo I pilfered from the package on the side table and turned it into sufficient glycogen to fuel an entire day of cycling hijinks.
Amazing.
And we rocketed down the various trails, but especially Black Bear, and some of us whooped, and all of us returned unbroken, having spent some days daring gravity to betray us. As far as I can tell, mountain biking has no real point, at least from an evolutionary biology point of view. It’s play. And to live in a time when grown adults can remove their attention from hunting and/or gathering long enough to devote themselves to this kind of play, and for machines to exist that make that game both thrilling and relatively safe, well that’s the sort of response to stimuli the first amoeba could never have comprehended. And yet, there we were.
Again, again, again. Amazing.
A stop and smell the coffee or cat box kind of thing, eh? I love this kind of stuff and was thrilled when on ride over the weekend I happened upon several buzzards enjoying an afternoon snack. I love that they might be the most nonplussed critters out there. Fun fact: Everyone thinks Hydrox cookies were an Oreo copy when in fact they came out 4 years prior. They also had a more crispy cookie wafer and a less sweet creme filling. Now you know.
I am amazed to find out that Hydrox came out first. Did I do that right?
I was also amazed by mtn biking and dirt biking this weekend. Met up with friends, old and new, in Moab. Stayed in the Sand Flats area the whole time. Slickrock still amazes on a moto, and I am also amazed that mtn bikers not on ebikes still ride it when there are much better rides in the area. Like the new Raptor Route. Amazing. And likewise amazing at what our machines and bodies can do. I was also amazed when the I had a spare threaded collar thingy that holds the derailleur hanger on when mine broke out of nowhere.
Now why do I have such a hard time carrying that stoke over into going to work today? My lack of mental fortitude in that area is also amazing, but not in the positive kind of way.