Winterlude

When it comes to the weather, living in Toronto is like being in a relationship with a borderline woman.  You have to expect the unexpected, you need to embrace sudden and unpredictable changes in conditions and see them as exciting or else you just won't be happy.

Last weekend, it was minus 5. I took my toddler on her first ever toboggan excursion and we both had a blast. (something those living in the sunny, fair climbs of So-Cal just can't casually do...so there!) Besides being a whole lot of fun and brining back familiar memories of life at the age of ten, when I used to toboggan at Battlefield Park, in my home town, down the Niagara escarpment, it was an amazing core and leg workout to haul my own ass, plus toboggan and 35 pound toddler up the hill a dozen times.

Seven days later, it was 12 degrees and partly sunny, what we call the January thaw, one of those unexplained and not really predictable yet not totally random phenomena that I was eluding to in the borderline simile above.

I rode my bike to the beach.

It felt strangely normal to be having a 50k road-bike excursion to the beach in January. What a wonderful break from the trainer. Something about the fresh air and scenery, lent itself out to broad, expansive emotional experience and reflective thought. 

Adapting to such different weather conditions, doing such different things, on consecutive saturdays, had me thinking about the line between the wisdom of acceptance and plain complacency. Clearly, it is futile to fight the weather, aging, death, tax, the need to work. I don't know about you, but one of the qualities I have acquired with age, is an increased ability to "suck it up", to go the with flow, to keep my mouth shut, to do what is needed. Overall, the more I have acquiesced, the more peaceful my life has become. I am less tortured. The cost of constant self-repression is an anger that simmers and never fades.  At times, I do miss those years when my righteous indignation drove me to various kinds of acting out and naughty behaviour in the name of going against the flow. Now, listening to Lamb of God in the car for a few minutes seems to do the trick, and then I am ready to bend over and take it where the sun don't shine once again. 

When it comes to submitting to the unpredictable and overpowering forces of life, I believe that a certain amount of anger is protective. The flip side to this is what Beck calls learned helplessness, and that leads to depression. Anger fuels action, it keeps things moving, it motivates. 

My need to be alone on my bike for hours has its seeds in a tension that lies at the heart of this conflict between acceptance and futile rebellion. All escape is temporary, at least in existential terms and riding your bike is no different, but escape it is. For me, it is related to anger at the towering structures of modern existence, the constant compromise involved in almost all human relationships; what Freud referred to as the "discontents" of civilization.  However, riding also is about confronting another set of limits. Those imposed by technology and physiology...geography and weather. Whatever you do, there is no escaping that which cannot be escaped. 

When I arrived at Rouge Beach Park, it was cold near the water, and the beach had a desolate, grey winter beauty about it. I paused to snap a few photos. 

Heading home, I rode by a man who was buzzing along the sidewalk riding in his government subsidized, electric wheelchair cart. He was smoking a cigarette and had beer cases full of empties piled up on his ride. For a moment, I was judging him, returning to my reflections on apathy and learned helplessness, I thought his life to be a good example of these ideas in action. Then the Bhuddist in me jumped in. My judging thoughts slipped away. I thought of both of us as pleasure-seeking, pain avoiding animals, united on a continuum of experience, separated by an economic divide that spelled the difference between my Kuota and his e-chair, my water bottles and his beer cans.  I smelled the man's cigarette smoke waft at me while I stopped at a traffic light. I strangely enjoyed it. My place, his place, it all seemed necessary. For a flash, I apprehended the notion that there is something false in all dichotomies. As difficult as it is to suspend judgment in the face of that which offends you, or that which is loathsome, or frankly tragic, suspending judgment is the road to enlightenment.  I know that sounds contradictory but I think it is true. 

Today, it was misty and not so warm, but not so cold. I ran hill repeats up the Bayview extension with a friend. Later this week, they are predicting snow...