"I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude."
Henry David Thoreau
But surely, dear reader, you already know this. Perhaps that's because you have been gracious enough to have read the words I've previously written on this subject here on my blog.
Likewise, perhaps, you're not super-stoked to read more of them. This is, after all, a bleak topic.
FEAR NOT! For my intention as pertains to this latest entry (the one you're still reading (Thanks!)) is to explain to you how, in my attempts to reorient myself post-divorce, after having turned many dark and disappointing corners, I'm starting to feel like, maybe I'm getting somewhere.
I'm hopeful in this post to describe for you the origins of this newfound perspective, how I arrived here, a few paces beyond the landscape of my annihilation, my ground-zero, to a place where I have regained some small measure of the good which I believe still resides in my heart.
I mean that, of course, quite literally.
But also metaphorically.
After months and months of effective and uplifting professional therapy, thousands of sincerely self-reflective written words (Thanks, cannabis!), scores of interesting conversations with many also-divorced men and women, the earnest support of my good friends and loving family, aaaand a few undeniably clarifying microdoses of psilocybin, I'm beginning to feel like I'm drawing nearer to being able to view myself, at the very least, as someone somewhat partially-restored, re-created in fact, a newly viable human being (albeit perpetually of the work-in-progress variety now), less consumed by sadness, regret, and self-loathing than I have been for some time.
Let's add hundreds of bike rides alone in the woods to that list. In fact, let's put it somewhere near the top.
Every single one of the bike rides that I've been on in the last 20 months has helped my healing immensely.
In the first dark weeks after my divorce, I rarely rode my bikes. When I did, the rides were brief and uninspiring. An obligation, the fulfillment of a promise I'd made to myself, but a pantomimed attempt to return to some form of normalcy more than anything else.
My heart, quite literally, wasn't in it. I was just going through the motions.
Nevertheless, slowly, over the course of many many months, my riding became more regular, and similarly, more enjoyable. I remember sharing with my therapist in one of our initial meetings the simple observation, "Everything feels better the moment I get on a bike, my body, my heart, my head. All of me just feels better when I'm out riding in the woods."
But why? Maybe it has something to do with the dharmachakra. Don't really understand a lot about that yet, but I'm intrigued...
Meanwhile, I'm testing a few personal theories of my own.
The first one pertains to the health of my (literal) heart. I've been riding with a heart rate monitor for three summers now, started doing so even before I got divorced. Like a lot of guys my age, my heart-health is kinda always on my mind. So I measure it. On every ride. And as I was saying above, I'm fortunate to have a good heart. Some of that is due to luck, some of that is due to having been able to access adequate health care all my life, but I think a lot of that is also due to the fact that I have been riding bikes regularly, almost daily, for some 40 years now.
Being physically (literally) heart-healthy during this otherwise acutely emotionally/psychologically diseased phase of my life has been a huge blessing. Without that it surely would have taken me much longer to begin to recover and to start to heal my wounded (metaphoric) heart.
Another working-theory I have is about proprioception, which is a big word that implies "your body often remembers what your (metaphoric) heart has forgotten." Conveniently, it turns out our bodies do this especially well when we're just going through the motions. Each time I ride I am reminded: I am competent. I am strong. I am able to experience pleasure and even joy. Increasingly so, ride after ride after ride, in fact.
I think, sometimes, the reward of effortful exercise, productive struggle, is just the struggle, doing the hard thing. During each sortie on my bike I am aware of my skills getting sharper, my body becoming fitter. In the throes of a time in my life when I felt overwhelmingly worthless, my bikes were nonetheless able to remind me: I can do hard things; I can do them well; and I can revel in the abiding satisfaction (the dopamine flood) of having done it just because it was so fricken fun to do!
The last one is solitude. For me, solitude is often the antidote to loneliness.
I still encounter hurtful loneliness all the time, especially when doing life's most mundane tasks, the everyday things I used to do with her... taking the pets to the vet, doing laundry, putting clean sheets on the bed, eating at the table in the kitchen, driving between Flagstaff and Scottsdale to visit family, just watching TV shows in the evening. These are the ghosts I am still struggling to exorcise from my home. Home continues to be such a brutally lonely place at times.
But the solitude I experience every time I'm out in the woods alone on my bike is different.
Solitude has never scared me. In truth, I think it often inspires me, sometimes it also intrigues me. So I spend a portion of every solo ride doing this: sitting somewhere next to my bike, being me, listening to both my beating and my broken heart, alone in the woods with my thoughts. And one beer.
This is the landscape of my re-creation.
It is in such moments of solitude that I am reminded, once again, of my good heart.
I am grateful for the blessings it receives each day.
I have Enough:
- An amazing relationship with my amazing kid.
- An abundance of good friends with whom I share many common interests.
- A vast family who continue to surround me with love and support.
- Daily opportunities to feel my living body work hard and receive joy.
- And innumerable places wherein I am able to contribute to my community, apply my sundry skills with diligence, and receive kindness in return.
I have a good heart. And it is full.
