It feels self-indulgent to be writing about weight loss when the world has decided to take itself to hell in a hand basket. Anybody that knows me knows that my mind is generally working on more than one level. I think in terms of both the macrocosm and microcosm. All things in an organic system are tied together in a cause-effect relationship. Think about it: cancer begins as one cell. Healing can begin with one person. No, I am no megalomaniac: I have a healthy ego, but it is not that swelled. I believe that we are more powerful than we believe.
There are two basic mistakes that one can make cycling. Pick too big a gear, pick too small a gear. Put more plainly it is to overestimate or underestimate ability, capacity, resources, and so on. I’ve made the same errors riding. Pull too small a gear on a hill and your legs spin out, pull too big a gear and your legs burn out. I’ve done this as recently as miles 60-70 on the last century I rode. What I needed to know is realistically what I could do. I needed to know what I could and could not do. I needed to know my strengths and my weaknesses.
So what does this have to do with the systematic dismantling of civil liberties, the harm that the current administration is doing to the environment, the disparity between the rich and the poor? It means that I have incredible power to effect change. So do you. The greatest error is not to risk the life-change that is required to make change. It is a funny thing: The only way that I learned my limitations was to force myself to my physical resources end. I was so damn tired that I could hardly stand. I wondered, when was the last time I was so damn tired from the struggle for peace and justice that I could hardly stand. There was a time that I was not only an endurance athlete, but deeply involved in the struggle to make the world a better place by making my little corner into a better place altogether.
Once cell can begin a cancer that leads to the death of the organism; one person can begin the change that heals the world. I have an errand to run. I’ll take my bike rather than driving and save a bit of gas, get some exercise, and – almost as a side effect – do that small bit to heal the planet. It may be just a bit, but great things are made of such small bits.
Ah, but I am only a fool…
