motorcyclemeditation.com

Fine fresh March weather, turbulent usher of seasons change, blowing away anything infirm or unprotected. Heft of the motorcycle’s litre engine powering through the wind, but journeys nevertheless more demanding, at the end of anything significant you can feel it.

The wind and motorcycle motion sweeping aside interior debris too, much needed after an awkward evening in company. The conversation revolving around the host’s difficulties in settling into retirement. Now past its early novelty, household jobs sorted and the holiday returned from, nothing to do. A common circumstance.

The question coming, so what do you think I should actually do with all this time. No constructive response possible. Refraining from saying, the only thing you’ll actually do is the thing you decide to do yourself, this aint something anyone else can sort out for you. Or from saying, better make sure you get on with it, not much has changed since last we chatted, won’t be long and you’ll be taking pills for depression, probably are already.

At heart, the predicament containing a poisonous centripetal dynamic, a slow turning away from outward facing action to inward facing self absorption. A menace not unique to retirement but more acute there.

Also refraining from saying, get yourself a motorcycle pal, here’s the paradox, on a motorcycle, your mind clears, your thoughts flow. Yet you’re rooted in the physical world, saved from disappearing into the vortex of your own preoccupations. Saved by the simple brute mechanical act of negotiating the universe in a raw physical way. The balance between meditation and action, a necessary and elusive condition, nothing like motorcycling to bring it about.

No point in wasting the words. Last time we chatted, suggested motorcycling, gave him the spiel, at the end, turns out he’d like to but his wife won’t let him, thinks it’s too dangerous.

My opinion, his end will come from the malaise he’s already in quicker than on a motorcycle. And without the fun.