The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.
– Oscar Wilde
I have a theory that every living being is designed to cope with a certain level of stress in their lives, that if our lives are somehow free of stress, we will invent new ways to meet our mind’s infinite capacity to worry about things it can’t control; I call this phenomenon the Suck Equilibrium.
The ability to cope with stress is what makes a person great; in Einstein’s case it was the stress caused by a desire to discover the Unified Theory, in other cases it might be to balance the checkbook. The driver isn’t important; that it pushes us to do more in life is what matters.
The Suck Equilibrium dictates that we adapt to the amount of stress we carry; no one is free of this burden – the hungry seek a meal, the homeless a home, the bike-less a bike, and the millionaire more millions. There is no cure, there is no remedy; no matter the level we reach, our natural inclination is to seek more from ourselves. In the end, there is only Rule #5.
The Cyclist is a unique character among the others. While the artist suffers because they must; the Cyclist suffers because they choose. To me, the greatest artist is that who choses to suffer, and who discovers the beauty in that choice. I am proud to call myself a Cyclist.
Vive la Vie Velominatus.
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@scotjonscot
Me:"If I don't feel like puking for at least a few seconds on every ride, I consider it a failure"
Her:"You're an idiot"
she may have a point.
This actually solves some problems for me.
And causes a few others.
Insightful.
While I can not say that cycling is an easy sport, I have to admit that rather than pain or suffering when I'm under pressure I just feel a slight discomfort, fully offset by the fact that I'm on the roads doing what I love.
The perfect motivation ahead of this mornings pre work extended commute.
Why go the short way?
Charly Wegelius says something very similar in his book.
There's a moment where he looks out of the team bus and sees a man walking home with a newspaper under his arm. The man, if he's a cyclist, probably thinks How Fucking Cool it would be to be on that team bus, and Wegelius thinks he would give anything to swap places with him.
But he has the self-awareness to realise that it was the stress and shit which was motivating him to suffer for the last 10 years, and without that he isn't going to cut it at the top level.
But more generally I think this is true in many areas of life. Someone said to me just last weekend that having lived in Singapore and other places abroad they had noticed that expats had an unfortunate tendency to get worked into a lather about small stuff, because they often had so little to stress about that they needed to look for other things to worry about.
Too true Frank. I may be very average as a cyclist, but often wonder why I cant just go out for 'an easy ride'.
Beauty and sorrow. It's all there really is. Given me something to think about and contemplate, thank you Frank.
@Pedale.Forchetta
Yes, this, but the full awareness of what others have experienced as pain and suffering, through great misfortune or disease, has spurred me to push beyond 'slight discomfort' to the point where only physical failure remains. How can I fail 'them'? By quitting short of true physical failure. I had a moment like this last year, where the pain had accumulated to the point that I began to wish it over, to let that wheel pull away, but I thought of my friend Nicole, suffering chemo and bone marrow transplants, and my resolve hardened, and I thought 'I may fail, but no fucking way am I letting that wheel go because I can quit'.
@Frank
"While artists suffer because they must;...". How so? Even if this were true (although I've always considered it a bit of a cliché*), this does not seem to be what the Oscar Wilde quote is about, in my opinion. Wilde differentiates between two categories of people, viz. A) Those who appreciate beauty, i.e. artists; and B) Those who know or have known sorrow, i.e. 'sufferers', or the bereaved...
One could argue, of course, that Wilde didn't account for an utterly deranged breed of people who both suffer (and embrace suffering) ánd appreciate beauty (e.g. in bicycles), but that would have been another story.My apologies. Pedantic rant over for now - 20 hill repeats this afternoon.
* The classic 'suffering artist' would be van Gogh, of course: he suffered (mostly rejection) throughout his life. But Picasso had a ball, by all accounts; Rembrandt was wealthy and comfortable most of the time, and Damien Hirst is still laughing all the way to the bank every single day, to the best of my knowledge.
in Ireland, anyone heard to be moaning about inconsequential shit is generally met with the wonderfully dismissive phrase..... 'shure you've little to be worrying about....'