Keep it Between the Ditches

It's been said that;

Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere...

and sometimes...

In the middle of no where... you find Your Self.

... and sometimes... I believe we wander around wondering; What in the F5#@% am I doin'?

Things... I've railed a bunch about things. Maybe too much. All about not letting them rule me... own me.

But now something has occurred to me, think about it... What if... the "problem" isn't THINGS... what if... the PROBLEM... is ME?

Think about this a minute...

If you (I) go the other way and spend  a lot of time, working, watching, guarding against and double checking all in the effort to make sure that we don't get ruled and owned by Things... so as to protect our Freedom...

... uh huh... we get ruled by those same damn Things once again...

Only this time, life gets' burned up worryin' about ensuring the Non-possession of those same damned things! It gets to bordering on Nuts! and our Freedom leaks out like water from a rusty bucket.

It's all about extremes... Like a motor... Too hot; Bad. Run too cold; Bad. Somewhere in the middle is the operating range.

So, in search of the holy grail of answers... People talk about seeking "Balance" in life. Like a "Balanced" eco system. Only problem with that is, such balance exists only in Disneyesque fairy tales.

There is no Balance in nature. No such thing. Nature is a world of violent extremes.

Things swing from overpopulation to catastrophic population crashes. Calmly grazing deer to the savagery of a wolf's assault. Sunshine to blizzards. Droughts to Floods. Feast to famine. Overgrown forest to burned out grasslands.

Life for a biker is flush to broke. Healthy to sick. Standing up to laying in a ditch. Employed to unemployed. Rolling down the road to stuck with a broken machine. Fueled up to out of gas. New tires to bald. One extreme to the other.

When you're riding through what appears to be a time of calm and serenity... You're only in that valley between the extremes.

So, there is no balance. Control is only a fantasy. Yet somewhere when it comes to the issues of life and things... I believe there still exists an answer. I think somewhere between the unattainable fantasy of rigid control... and the wild gyrations of total chaos is the possibility of following a sustainable road.

Like one of those snowboarders in a halfpipe... back and forth up one side and turn back before the extreme... and back down and up the other side. Over and over testing the limits but staying in that sustainable Operating range.

Rather than seeking control, rather than achieving the unachievable "Balance" I see things as a pendulum. You can't stop it. It swings irresistibly back and forth into the foggy far distant future. The trick is to get into that rhythm and go with it.

Like I wrote about the weather in Alaska. You can fight it and lose, or you can embrace it, equip for it and go with it. Learn to love it as a piece of life... and just swing along with the pendulum.

You can't stop it... but maybe you can influence it. You can teach yourself to function within the established rhythm.

Maybe if we learn to keep a low key, subconscious eye on the world around us... kind of an underlying situational awareness... we can get ourselves to seeing that pendulum starting to swing  too far... starting to gain a lil' too much momentum or force... Whether that be in the actual world around us... or in the world between our ears... and do it without the phobic life darkening extremes.

... If we can apply a touch of friction to slow it down... coax it slowly back into that calm, sustainable rhythm, before it starts breaking things; if we can pull it back into a cadence that is within our ability to keep step... we can avoid twisting our livers into knots.. and keep the scooter between the ditches.

Kind of an abstract thought that occurs on occasion when I get a mite too close to the bottom of a beer bottle... I hope I'm right... I'm kinda weary of untying knots.

Grab Your Handles and Ride
Brian