The Beginning

It was on a bike ride recently that I came to understand something really foundational to myself.

Here it is:

• People pay me to manage projects of transition, and to think strategically. They pay me to move them forward toward something. I am very good at this – seeing future possibilities and good ways to achieve these future possibilities.
• I talk lots about things like learning to focus on the here-and-now, and learning to really experience “the present moment”, but I am really lousy at it.
• I have a very “addictive” personality, and this leads me to become very passionately involved in “hobbies” in my life.
  

So, the above facts sort-of bounced around in my brain for years, and I kept them very separate from each other. My life continued to roll frantically down a path that kept me always focused on the things that people pay me to do well, while at the same time deep inside I realized that I needed to get better at living in the moment. These things seemed very much at odds with one-another, but I never really thought much about it.

It was that third fact that would join the two pieces together, though it took a bike ride on a beautiful Colorado Autumn day to allow my brain to let that fusion occur.

Here is the scene:

I was 45 minutes or so into a ride. It is a common ride – one that I take often. I call it the Crowfoot ride, since it follows a road called Crowfoot Valley Road for much of the ride. It is perfect in that it is slightly uphill for the first 10 minutes or so, then starts to slant more and more upward, until finally it climbs at a nice steep pace for 10 or 15 minutes. Then it flattens quite a bit, but still uphill, for another 5 – 10 minutes. Then you turn around, and head back, and the joy begins as a reward for all the work to this point. I head south going out and up, then turn back north for the ride home. So, this is the perfect ride when there is a south wind. On this day, there was a wonderful south wind.

I had worked really hard all the way out. After making the turn and heading back, it became an easy 25 MPH ride along the ridge with a tailwind. This is such joy for a bike rider – a nice tailwind. I hit the steep downhill, tucked, and flew down at 45 MPH+, letting the bike slow to 30 MPH as the hill decreased.

My G-d, I thought, what is it that I love so much about this? Pure clarity, nothing else on my mind, wonderful ideas popping in occasionally to be mulled around in the idea polisher of my little brain.

And right then, the realization crystallized like a bright shining stone falling out of the polisher. All of my “passions” had this thing in common – they allowed me to focus completely on the thing that I was doing, and within that focus and presence, a joy and peace seeped out and surrounded me with a feeling that I longed for in my life. Those were the moments when the magic presented itself.