Thinking it Forward

It’s that moment. The wind flowing over your skin, your body tingling from the bright rays of sunshine beaming down from a cloudless sky, each of your senses cranked to 11, when you realize just how lucky you are to be alive. Just a light touch here, a small movement there, the handlebars manipulated with the lightest of touch, navigating you and your two wheeled vessel around potholes and small bumps in the road.

Carefully you ease up, not wanting to end the freedom of movement you feel over those walking nearby, nor wanting to ram headlong into traffic to be struck by an unexpected vehicle; it’s a fine balance between freedom and safety. Finally full stop, time to take in the scene as you rest easily against the light-pole, one hand still on the handlebars, the other feeling the warm gleam radiated from a mornings worth of sunshine cast upon its dark gray surface.

Then you’re off again, this time more stridently as you bring to bear the full force of your legs, them working like pistons in a race car, faster and faster. You’re up to speed now, freedom once again attained and inhaled as in a drunken stupor of delicious wine, too sweet to let go or even imagine so, too magnificent in its splendor and allure to let slip away. Your purchases swing softly from side to side in its carry bag, which is hung unceremoniously from the left handle and threatens to be jostled by your pistoning knee but always just out of reach by mere inches.

Guiding down the lane away from bustling traffic you bring your bearing directly into the sun, feel its warm glow alight upon your skin, its rays warming the fine hairs of your arms and neck. To have the good fortune to experience these sensations makes one gracious and fulfilled, knowing that dire situations are beset upon a majority of others with no hope of reversal.

How lucky you are indeed, to have this freedom and luxury to experience the simple pleasures in life, to not be oppressed or denied access to even a simple bike ride on a sunny day without a care in the world. This is how life should be enjoyed, to take fascination and notice of the minutiae amongst the macroscopic, the tiny pleasures amongst the great, the smallest of exhilarations folded into the mundane. Thank your lucky stars you live in a society that affords you such things as these.