Misery can be shared, but it’s an odd sort of sharing. It’s
not like sharing a load. You know, where “many hands make light labor.” Because
no one can reach inside of you and lift your heart. Not really. But it can be
shared in a way that’s meaningful.
I’ve been going on that Saturday morning group ride with
Fowler for a few weeks now. It’s miserable. It is cold, wet, and physically demanding.
But the misery is shared, and that makes it something new, something different.
As if suffering in tandem with other people provides a sort of alchemy that
makes it into something else. In this case, it alchemizes suffering into a
twisted sort of fun.
“Look at us,” we say to the world. “We chose to suffer
together. Isn’t that grand?”
This last week, we ended the group portion of the ride at
Monica’s bakery, as is tradition. Further, tradition demanded that we ride
Chico way home. But we broke with
tradition and rode up and over Newberry Hill. It is impossible to suffer as a
group on Newberry Hill. The act is isolating.
As we approached the hill, my thoughts kept bouncing
around. From Teddy to Chris to an old friend of mine who is trying to figure
out what to do if his wife has cancer. And my heart hurt. We turned into the
hill, Fowler and I, and began to climb.
It was like riding a bicycle up a river.
The water washed the debris of fall off the road and into
the shoulder. The steady rain dug a channel in that debris, a little rushing
torrent of water over clean pavement. My wheels sliced through the water,
followed the wandering line up river. My mental room for distracted thoughts
diminished with each pedal stroke, washed away down river.
There is a mental narrowing that happens with difficult
physical efforts. If your mental capabilities can be thought of as a light,
climbing Newberry hill narrows that light into a laser-like beam. In the midst
of it, in the middle of the burning lungs, aching legs, and thumping heart, you
cannot think about anything else. You are cleansed of distraction, washed clean
of all thoughts except the pursuit of the top.
As I felt that narrowing happen, I pushed into it.
Accelerated. Plunged into the discomfort to find the emptiness inside. And I
found myself alone. I suppose this sort of suffering can only happen alone.
I crested the hill and the spell broke. Fowler and I rode
on, chatted about nothing and complained about the weather. We rolled toward
home, and I thought about community. About suffering. About how we were
suffering as a community, a community of friends made family by love. About how
we suffered together, but how each person suffered alone as well. There are parts you cannot share because they
are tied to the foundations of your identity. They are internal in ways that
are impossible to communicate. They are the deep wounds on the inside.
We dropped down Seabeck Highway. Felt the rain blast our
faces. Watched the water jet off our tires. Felt the joy of motion, of descent,
of the childlike wonder in existing. We forgot about suffering entirely, about
the grandness of it, the parts we share, the parts we can’t share, and
everything in between. We lost ourselves in the wind.
Look at us, world. We did not choose to suffer together.
But we are together. Isn’t that grand?
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