motorcyclemeditation.com

Sunday afternoon tea at my daughter’s new apartment, London like a ghost town over August, therefore leaving the motorcycle behind and taking the car, this also being easier for taking flowers and a cake. Smiles all round, wow, nice apartment, beautiful view.

My daughter in the midst of a big career change, becoming a teacher, not long and it’s her alone in a classroom heaving with adolescents. The prospect daunting, she suitably daunted, adolescents being biologically programmed to find the tiniest fissure, insert the crowbar, wriggle it around, rip it open.

Monday morning on the motorcycle and thinking it through. A tough challenge, requiring a setting aside of her natural instinct to anticipate and prepare, get ready for any imagined contingency, this approach carrying risks bigger than those it’s supposed to defuse. Prepare too much and she’ll blind herself to the actual situation unfolding before her.

On cue, a car pulling out in the path of the motorcycle. Changing gear, squeezing the brake, the motorcycle slowing, the car getting out of the way, normal progress resuming. A scary crisis that wasn’t.

A deeper meaning at work, beyond technique and discipline, namely, appropriate mindset. The essence being, discovery. Unblinded by prior imaginings, just the pure naked situation and the freedom to interact with it.

The sense and sensation of discovery lying at the heart of any motorcycle ride, physical conditions varying for every mile of every journey. A general truth more intensely experienced on a motorcycle than elsewhere. Also more critical to survival, misread the situation and it’s not necessarily something you walk away from. Every motorcycle ride, a lesson in the skill of discovering.

Such insights however only to be learned over many miles and many journeys, or perhaps many years. For my daughter, the challenge before her still daunting, and best negotiated without benefit of helpful motorcycling precepts from her father. Sitting on the motorcycle today, feels good to have kept the wisdom to myself, let her deal with it her own way.