Walter Machado crashed at Lansdowne a few weeks ago. While he was recovering at home, I asked him (among other things) how his bike was.
“I don’t know. Peter took it home – and I have not seen it. It is not important. I have many other bikes” was his reply.
I used to think that owning the best top of the line bike with the lightest wheels was important. Now, I am sure that it makes little difference to my performance and enjoyment of cycle racing.
We elevate many things in our lives to the level of “IMPORTANT”. In reality, what is important to you will not be important to someone else. They are important purely because we make it so. Then we stress out about these ‘important’ things – when they really do not mean much.
Is there anything in life that is IMPORTANT?
I don’t think so. I used to think that I was important. And that was a huge delusion!
You would think that if a thing is a ‘matter of life or death’ – then it must be important. But having lived through life, and seen death close at hand…. life is not as important as it is made out to be. And the same can be said of death.
… And once I let go of the illusion of IMPORTANCE, it opened up a whole new level of possibilities. I found out that when I let go of importance, I was able to discover FUN.
All my life, I have had problems – ever since I can remember.
Also, what I have realised is that all of my problems have had a nasty habit of ‘sorting themselves out’. Sometimes it appears that I have the own power to fix them myself…and (usually) at other times, someone or something sorts it out for me!.
My little grandson only has 3 problems: eat, sleep and passing the processed food. I am sure that when I was a baby, I had similar problems. But as I grew up, the width and depth of the problems expanded….
School, teachers and homework;
Then girl problems;
Followed by ego and money;
Soon, it drew in political, social, physical and spiritual problems.
Now, my original problems of eating, sleeping and passing … pales in comparison to the rest!
I still have lots of problems. But the difference now is that I let them sort themselves out. When the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ threatened the civilised world, I did nothing. Now they can’t find the weapons. When the ‘Great Financial Crisis’ hit the globe, I kept my cool. Now, the CBA makes 6 Billion dollars! The last time I crashed and broke my bike, I rested and a replacement bike turned up in the post!
Just as yeast is an essential ingredient of a good loaf of bread, it seems like problems have been the necessary catalyst in my life to help in its expansion. And just like in bread making, I let the yeast (problems) brew…Then somehow, it goes through the process of agitating the flour (life). And as the force of the yeast dissipates (like the problems) a wonderful loaf of bread pops out.
Last Sunday at Lansdowne, something made me go for the prime win. Something made me jump the peloton at the base of the ‘hill’ half way through the race. Then as I laboured past the chequered tubes, someone blew the whistle for the prime. All I had to do after that was to hold the chasing bunch off for a full lap!
My watch died a few weeks ago and I have been making and keeping work appointments since then without a watch to guide me. I do have a replacement watch – one that my children bought me that has a GPS function and all the fancy functions. I did not feel inclined to put it on. Working to a schedule without a watch (I don’t have a clock on the dash on my ute also) as I drive around the suburbs is an interesting challenge. But I don’t seem to be late very much. Why do I do this? Simply because I can!
My phone rings when I am in the middle of doing something. I let it ring out. It might have cost me a potential sale. I might have missed out on an important message. But I don’t really care. I can just let my phone ring out – without dreading of the consequences.
I find that my world gets bigger as I push on the ‘boundaries’. I open up more possibilities, experience more things. It is like moving to a higher level in a video game. It doesn’t get any easier – but it is more fun. But I push the ‘boundaries’ purely because I can. Not because I have to – or that I should.
… So what happened last Sunday at Lansdowne? I won the prime. Not by much because Daniel swept past me just after I crossed the finishing line. But somehow I managed to stay away from the chasing bunch. That is just one of the rewards when I decide to do ‘far out’ things … just because I can.
I went to see the latest movie ‘INCEPTION’ a few days ago.
I was particularly intrigued by the story of how dreams can be created to span a multitude of levels and how movement from one level to another is effected.
… Especially in the ‘waking up’ process. Because when you die in the dream – you wake up. The question is: what is it that you are waking up to. It is reality… or is it another dream?
Sometimes I wonder what happens when I die. And maybe the movie presents a possible answer. “When I die… I just wake up into another reality/dream”.
What if THIS is a dream?
Most of my dreams fade rapidly away when I wake up and are forgotten. But they are very vivid while I am in the dream… that much I remember. And when sometimes in my life when I encounter “déjà vu” moments, I wonder if I experienced them in one of my dreams or was it in ‘another life”?
Are our dreams just a reminder that this reality as we know it… is only just another level of dreaming?. This is interesting because it means that we never just disappear when we ‘die’. We just wake up into something else. Another level of dreaming that is also just as ‘real’- that where it is near impossible to separate from what is real and what is a dream.
Well, if THIS reality that I am living is just a level of dreaming for me… then I will just sit back and enjoy it (just like the dream I had last night). For sometime in the not too distant future, I will wake up.
At the Tennis Centre last Sunday, a small break crept away. Somehow I managed to get across. And I just knew when I glanced backwards to see rapidly wide open space between us and the peloton – that this was the winning break. I got up and did a turn and about half a lap later, the ‘rubber band broke’.
Many of us have experienced the point when we ‘give up’ and get dropped from the back of a group. It seems like a collision of the mind and the body – and they both work in unison. At a split time, everything decides to give up.
We don’t plan to give up. We don’t weigh up the pros and cons and discuss it with our friends and family before we do it. It just ‘happens’.
Like my mum giving up life almost a month ago, there comes times in our lives when we will have to ‘give up’ on things. We give up on our spouses and get a divorce. We give up on our jobs and either retire of get another one. We give up our home and move on. We even give up on our bikes and get new ones…
… The question is when do we give up and when do we ‘hang on’?. I have many experiences when I get dropped from a group – only to see them ‘seat up’ 100metres in front of me. If I had only suffered for a bit longer, I would have stayed in the cocoon of the peloton.
When does one get divorced? After the kids have grown up… after the 200th argument… after the 9th counselling session… after the #*%#* cheats on you… after you find someone else?????
The same question pops up many other times in our lives.
Giving up is not the same as failure. Confusion comes about when we equate giving up with failure. When we cut the connection between the two, giving up becomes a very handy tool to take along your life journey.
Do you remember the time when someone asked you the answer to a riddle? Constipation sets in and you just can’t get the answer out. What happened when you said “I give up”? You got the answer and you had a jolly good laugh. Now, if you stubbornly refused to give up, you would spoil your whole day trying to figure out the answer.
By giving up, you became more ‘enlightened’. You did not fail. By letting go of your ignorance, you gained knowledge.
I love the example of the butterfly. Only by giving up its old form, can it progress to its destiny. If it stayed a caterpillar and refused to give up this identity – then no butterfly. If it stayed in its cocoon – no butterfly. Only by giving up the safety of its temporary identities, can it become the butterfly. If you have time, watch this fascinating video…
Now that you are able to give up without the negative baggage associated with it, the question is ‘when?’. How do you know when to give up?
It is quite simple. You just know when. You get this feeling from somewhere. It is in your heart and not coming from your mind. You just know….
NSW loses the ‘Origin’ game. That is bad. But if you are a Queenslander, that is good.
It is raining on the weekend again. For us Waratah Masters, that is bad news for our racing. But if you were a farmer with a parched piece of land, rain would be good news.
When I broke my bike down in Moruya, I thought that it was bad. But when I got a new bike to replace the old one, it was good. (the last time I crashed, I had ‘died’ – see ‘life is up and down’ blog post) There is a tendency to judge events that happen to us as isolated parts of our lives. This produces a lot of unnecessary turbulence in our emotional states. We get ‘yanked’ around like a puppet on a string – worrying and complaining about the bad things, and going into short lasting joy about the good things.
Like a well written novel, there is a place for all the events that happen in our life in the story. When you finish the story, you realise that the ‘goodies’ and the ‘badies’ were all part of the ingredients that made the novel so enjoyable. This is the way that our lives run. All of the events that happen are ‘good’ for our life drama. They make our lives that much more fun and interesting….but only if you stop making judgements of each and every event in isolation. When you read a novel, you don’t stop and judge each twist of the story. You continue reading the story – knowing that these are all part of the full drama.
If you let go of judging things as they happen to you – and let your life run its course, you will be able to enjoy it a lot more. And at the end, when you are ready to leave this human game, you will be able to appreciate how well your life story has been written and played out. Much like how you feel as you finish a good book.
Death is such an amazing mystery. We cannot predict exactly when it will happen and when it does occur, we do not know if there is anything else there besides the physical bodily seizure.
It is the stuff that breeds terror and hope in human beings. Out of the mystery of death, come the solutions of religion, rituals and superstitions.
My mum had a ‘picture book’ death. If I had to write my death story, and I inserted the details of my mum’s life and death – it would sound too good to be true. But even picture books have missing gaps. Besides her body just grinding to a halt, I am still mystified as to what exactly happened. I searched ‘what happens when you die’ using Google and came up with 5.8million results. But no consensus.
For me, mum’s death gave me another clue about the game of life. There is no need to worry about what happens when the umpire blows the final whistle. Because that has nothing to do with the game. The game is played up to the final whistle and it is all about playing full out during the allocated time. It is too late to play after the final whistle.
I now realise that while I am out here playing the human game, what happens to me after I die is of no relevance. Let the mystery remain a mystery.
If you haven’t seen the movie that stars Michael Douglas called ‘The Game’ – then it is worth finding it on DVD and getting a kick out of how we can create illusions that seem so real.
I read the news article in the Sydney Morning Herald recently (http://www.smh.com.au/world/french-turning-to-kidnaps-for-thrills-20100327-r45o.html) and it seems like some French entrepreneurs have taken the Game concept into a business. You can now pay them to ‘turn your life upside down’ – just for the feelings that it gives you. The difference here is that you get a password that you can use if the going got too hard and you want to ‘abandon the game’. A bit like walking out of a horror movie when you can’t stand it anymore.
If this life that we live is also a ‘Game’ – then do we have a secret password we can use when we think the game is too tough?
…or as in the movie ‘The Game’, are we supposed to ride out the painful parts of the game so that we can get to the ‘sweet’ ending?
It is hard for me to believe that two years ago, I was in Concord Hospital watching the lights go out over Sydney for “Earth Hour”. My lights had gone out also when I hit that van at Homebush during the Easter Show period. But like the ‘Earth hour’, it was only temporary. I was’ dead’ for over an hour and when I regained consciousness in emergency,the first thing I heard was the doctors saying amounst themselves was that I was ‘dead cold’ and that they had to get my temperature back up. Then my son said to me “…you could have died…”.
As bike riders, many of us have gone down (and out) in some fashion. Denis also went under a horse float during that period. Paul shattered his arm and his confidence when he hit some soldiers and even our editor Keith went through nightmares during his recovery stint at The Royal North Shore. Ludwig tangled with a tree and got split. Then we have Barry who came back from the dead after being run down on the M5. And there are countless others…
Last Sunday, Kevin just got piped at the line by Albert in our race. Now Kevin is also someone who has been hit by a car and his bones are still on the mend. Meanwhile Paul (and Denis) is giving the B graders a hard time and Barry shows his class over his able bodied peers. Ludwig is almost back to his old form. (Keith just went home early to work). The point is that we bounce back up.
I can’t speak for the other riders who have had critical time(s) in their cycling ‘careers’ when they have been down (and out). But I can speak for myself. It is not good to have a bad crash – yet it is not bad either. The experiences that I went through is not possible to be duplicated by any other means. It is not even something that money can buy. And if I had not experienced the downs together with the ups that invariably came afterwards, the spectrum of life experience would be incomplete.
I know that those who have not had the experience of that bad crash (– and would give anything not to have one) will find it hard to comprehend this. All that I can say is that not every rider will have a bad crash… but before you let out that big sigh of relief, you will have a down sometime. It may not be on the bike.
Giving up is not the same as failure. Confusion comes about when we equate giving up with failure. When we cut the connection between the two, giving up becomes a very handy tool to take along your life journey.
