Day 10: Just Past the Point of No Return

I awoke this morning late in the day, my body unusually tired from the night before. I had finished a long stretch of riding after saying goodbye to my friend Mordechai the night before, and had struck the hundred mile mark before deciding to call it a night. The sun warmed me with her friendly rays, but the wind competed with her affections, leaving me to cuddle into my blankets all the more.

“Just call me,” he said the last time we talked, “anywhere within a hundred miles, and I’ll come get you.” I knew he was mostly joking about the specific distance. Surely, if I went just one more mile, I could still have my rescuer come and save me from my decision. But still. Asking someone to come a hundred miles.

I had come a long way, but maybe this was time to turn back. Waco has plenty to offer, even if I did not go back to Baylor for a semester. Maybe I would just hang around and annoy my friends, or get a job working with the homeless. I could busy myself pretty readily. I am good at that. I always have been.

But why would I be doing all that? Would I just be waiting the semester out, until the summer came, and then waiting out the summer, until the fall came again? Always putting off what I need to be happy, as if I can obtain happiness if I just... try... harder...

Patience is the virtue of the investment theory of happiness. Patience, because happiness is fleeting, and only for a moment, so not worth pursuing at all. But that happiness and what I am experiencing now are different, in some way. As I ride, it hurts, but I am free. I am alive. I am happy.

Not the sort of happiness that comes from sitting with an old friend or having a laugh with some new ones, but much more like that than the sordid happiness that arises from winning a level of some phone game or successfully answering all of the emails in your inbox. Those in the latter half really seem to me now to just be distractions from this other happiness. Perhaps I am not really making that much progress towards my goal, but the process of getting there has been so much more satisfying than I thought possible.

The idea that my worthiness, and thus happiness, depends upon my accomplishments has plagued my entire existence. If I invest now in the future me, then I will be happy in the future--but my future me is often so busy investing in his own ‘future me’ that he forgets to be happy when he deserves it. As Michael Oakeshott says, “The future is the Moloch to which the present is sacrificed.” If we cannot turn back on our lives and point to specific items in which to take pride, then we deem our lives not worth living.

What of the simple farmer, who lives his entire life simply providing for his family? Does he live a life utterly devoid of meaning, just because his was not a life with a thousand mountains of glory? No. Perhaps he even lives a better life than people like me who measure themselves by their accomplishments. My worth can only ever equal the sum of all I have done, and when compared to anyone that history remembers, my story is less than insignificant-- it is paltry in the pantry of world goods.

The farmer, though, can turn to his fields and say, “In you, I have found meaning. The ground under my feet needed to be tilled, and so I tilled it. In the steady tilling of the field, I discovered the way in which God gently kneads my soul, working in me so that I may be tender enough for seed to grow. Then the ground needed planting, and so I planted. In the steady dropping of seeds, I discovered the way in which God drops tiny, almost meager scraps into our lives, that grow into the most meaningful of experiences. Then the crops needed watering, and so I watered them. In the steady watering of the crops, I discovered how God will give us just what we need to grow, in the manner in which God calls us.

“And I did not just live when the harvest came in. My life was there in the tilling, to be celebrated because I am alive. My life was there in the planting, to be celebrated because I am bringing in new life. My life was there in the watering, to be celebrated because even with all I could do, I remained dependent on the mercy of God for every day.”

What lie has infected my soul so as to turn me from this simple truth? Why have I surrendered the happiness that could be mine in each day, in order to obtain some vague happiness in the future? Why am I so afraid to leave it behind, and to embrace happiness every day?

My foot finally pressed down on the pedal before me, and I began my journey once again. My goal lies before me, spread out emotionally ad infinitum. But now, I lie past the point of no return. I only pray that I will not turn back.

Almost as a test to my devotion to my newfound appreciation for happiness, God began to set the sun in the most beautiful way, between two distant hills, just seven miles into my journey. I pulled to the side of the road, and put down my bike, knowing that though I had given up accomplishing my specific goal, that here was a moment for happiness. I sat in the dirt, pulled out my dear friend Rosie, and began to play a song as my friend the sun went to sleep.

Day 10: Nineteen hundred and eighty-six miles to home. Maybe only a few more to me.