What are the odds? It's been a great week. It began with a spin of epic proportions with the local cycling collective and wound up today with a lot of love on the side of the street in my home town. Funny because its been a year of Atlantic depths and Alpine highs, now rounded off nicely.
I'm a positive person. I try to see the good in everyone first. I try to put a smile on everyone's face because I've always known that the profundity of some people's despair can be impregnable and bottomless. Sometimes a handshake or random act of kindness or a quick quip at your expense can be all that is required to turn over a day.
So last Sunday my Christmas season began in the company of most of the local collective, the Kunst krew, the boys that are the art of cycling. They also happen to be a bunch of men that have propped me up on occasion this year and given a damn. Of course we went cycling! Cycling is my coke, my crack, my toke of choice and I'm never far from my next hit. We cycled on red-ale coloured roads, made sloppy by recent agricultural off-run, stopped by the sea for a couple of beers while seated around a smoking fire and went our separate ways with broad grins on our faces.
Then midweek I ran into John, my tattoo-artist of choice who had just been talking about me in a good way with a past pupil. Later I ran into a fellow teacher who'd only been talking about how I always try to remain positive. And I'd never thought about it. Family health problems, a broken elbow, unwanted stress from unwanted directions were the order of the last year. The stress of your ultimate fears sure can make you focus. I won three local races and a league in the last twelve months on anger, hunger and specific training despite all that. I showed up at the first league race knowing I was going to win. How did I know? Because whatever higher power that's had my back for half a century knew I deserved it. I had so much energy from all my life's dark matter, well, I could have illuminated hell with it. And often had. Putting anger and frustration into every pedal stroke is what won me that race. I'd figured the algorithm that converted a crap year and a world of worry, fear and lost sleep, into forward-moving energy. Hate energy. Dark Matter. I knew I was going to win on the grid. An hour's relief from the servitude of fear, worry and hurt, but a relief all the same.
Consider the inanimate buffoon that sat on the couch after breaking his elbow. It was, by a street, a turn around. Hats off to Richard for cajoling me. Ironic as it sounds, getting back training proved that pain is a wonderful anaesthetic. That and sharing my worries with a fabulous band of friends. Always a kind word just when it was needed.
And then on the street today. I ran into people. You know how Christmas is... people around that you haven't seen in a year. And I found that even though I've existed under a cartoon cloud all year, people wanted to talk. Or hail a greeting. Or share my crooked smile for a minute. You could call it Christmas cheer but really it was something in me that had changed.
Hemingway wrote that "The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places." I felt that today in South street. If only for a moment my sprained spirit and strained heart were stronger after a wicked year. So I'm not talking about a broken elbow, but you knew that, didn't you? I dunno how I smiled sometimes, dunno how I taught classes, dunno in fact how I functioned on so many levels.... a Dad, a husband, a friend, a son, a colleague. And sometimes I didn't. That's when I hugged my incredibly strong wife and went cycling. Into a block headwind. Ignoring soaked feet. Laughing at gravity on a hillside. That's where I healed; at the point of physical hurt. Now, I do understand that a cup of tea can do the same job for some of you.... I admire that. I'm jealous of that. But I'm Joe Rossiter and it's always been the longest way round to find the shortest way home for me. I've cycled for thirty years but this is the first time I understand why.
Hemingway also said that "Every day above the earth is a good day." And I see that now too. So I've been reading a good novel, drinking Yellow-Belly Citra Pale Ale, thinking about twinkling tree-lights outside churches.... I know that I'm a good person, that basically all of us are. Occasionally our DNA or our psyche or a trauma turn us away from the light. Maybe we all have a terror or two fizzing through our veins between the red and white blood cells?
Do we ever know? We can't know what keeps people awake at night, with nothing but a ceiling bearing down for company. But we can lift that burden one millimetre at a time by realising not all of us are what we appear to be. Maybe we should assume that life is tough for every single one of us and then no-one gets left behind or left out?
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