ta·bu·la ra·sa
/ˌtäbo͝olə ˈräzə/
an absence of preconceived ideas or predetermined goals; a clean slate; a blank board.
It takes a lot of energy to see things in a new light.
If I could describe inside my head normally for my entire life, there are pop ups, connections, and associations that fly through my mind when I see anything. Like a theme the fills itself in and takes over the fonts and styling on a computer, my mind trends to identify patterns and spirals into an analysis frenzy. If I am out in the ride and I go by a house emanating the smell of a relative’s house from back in my life (all my relatives’ houses smelt slightly different), I would be bombarded with memories, feelings, associations, and mental themes.
These would take over my mental track, and off I would go in that direction for the next while on the ride. Lost in that “folder” of thought…. at least… until this year!
This Summer I began to try and steer the metal ride I’m taking while riding as much as I steer the bike itself.
I am trying to shut off all the pop ups that happen in my mind and just experience the smell, the lighting, the vibe of an area (which I do believe is a real thing outside of my head), without the back catalog of well worn thoughts and imagery taking over. The internal dialogue I’ve gotten used to over my lifetime doesn’t always need to be “on”, and I think I’m getting better at toggling it “off”.
It is one of the most refreshing things I’ve done on my ride in years!
Yesterday I went back to my hometown to bike around, but rather than basking (or drawing) in nostalgia, I set out to look at things as if I’d never seen them before. Tabula Rasa!
What if I didn’t know all the stories about this place? What if I didn’t have an intense history here? What if I was any person living in any of these houses I cycle past?
At first it felt like swatting flies as familiar tales and dots connect in patterns like they usually do. But almost like a meditation, gradually the filter lifts and I see this neighborhood like someone who’d never been there before. I am present. I am in the moment. I am just there on my bike seeing what is there right now (other than myself).
It was so unbelievably hard at first, even just realizing that this should be a goal sometimes took forever to realize, but now that I have… it is amazing! When something reminds us of our childhood, we really mean it reminds us of a memory from our childhood. This practice zooms my head right back (once I get there) into feeling like I felt as a child before I began to form those millions of associations and connections.
I do yoga and I’ve tried meditation, but I don’t think I can do this as well when I’m not riding my bicycle. There is something about turning the legs and paying attention to my motion and safety that distracts my normal mental patterns enough to experience just what is now.
I’ve actually teared up a couple times on my rides just from feeling lighter. The shedding of all that emotional weight that usually just comes from opening my eyes is freeing. If my brain were a computer, it would be like shutting down everything going on in the background and other tabs, and using my full emotional and mental processing power to download the world right in front of me with full attention in every way. It’s freeing and energizing like a natural high.
You might be thinking, “big deal” so you clear your head on the ride?!
Maybe. But it took me years to get here.
Some people turn to comfort food, others turn to comfort mindsets. For years I’d try to put myself in a comfortable situation to find peace. Over the years, music, lighting, food, smells, styles, television shows, stories, art, were all cataloged in my mind into things that felt comfortable and uncomfortable. When something bad happened like you fail a test, or your friend betrayed you in some little stupid way, or you gained weight, (I don’t know how it started but) I tried to use all things to bring myself back to a happier mindset. I don’t think I understood what I was trying to do, but I guess it kinda worked to get me here. Somehow this process kinda started going on in the background all the time without me really realizing it. Like having the AC on in the background all the time, you don’t hear the noise anymore until it stops.
To clarify, it’s like hearing a familiar important song from your life. Sometimes it’s good to remember the history, but imagine if sometimes you could hear that same song again and just see what it does to you right now without the “baggage”. Would you still like it? Would a set or baggage made from scratch look like the old baggage?
I’ve tried to do this during yoga, or before going to sleep with an Australian Budhist in my earphones trying to help me relax. But sitting or laying still seems to fight the process in a way that cycling doesn’t. All my sources say that freeing unhelpful attachments is freeing, but it’s also scary. There is a creeping fear of losing your bearings. Alzheimers has always unsettled me. I started worrying about it when I was 6. Thinking about my Mom and her Alheimers this year, I wondered why I was less scared than earlier in my life when I was supposedly further away from having to worry about it. So many little thought strands came together to build myself this lifeline I got thrown. Realizing that forgetting is a normal and useful part of life in the day to day sense. Realizing that I really dislike the term “always remember ” fill in the blank as it is not how the universe ultimately works.
I also saw that my Mom had dropped her constant note writing, obsession with paper records, and her predilection to jump from worry to worry from dawn to night. She was also happy. Living in the moment, not thinking about what she’d lost, or having her computer following her usual program, she is genuinely happy where she is and with the people there. The only time she is sad or unsettled is when she remembers to worry about something, or she associates the irony of her having cared for so many in our family with dementia that she now has it When those gray clouds don’t come into view. She genuinely just likes being in a nice moment.
I’m not at all saying that Alzheimers has a perk, but just that it allowed me to see that sometimes I too can be a lot happier in a given moment if I don’t let anything (good or bad) get in the way of that moment. At least sometimes and if by choice, this could be a good thing. (In a neural normal brain memories can still be accessed with or sometimes without intent. Alzheimers does not allow this involuntary or voluntary access as parts of the brain are affected by the disease.)
My fear of shutting that down was very real, and kept me from knowing this sooner.
My fear of forgetting was way too inflamed to take back control of deciding what was ok to forget. My fear of forgetting is fighting against the river’s flow. I barely know some of the people in my Mom’s black and white photo albums. My kids certainly don’t, and almost everyone else who might connect with them has already passed away. The first reaction is guilt and loss for what family history has already been forgotten, but that’s not really fair. I could spend weeks preserving everything but for who? I mean I have all the basics down, but I think that it is okay to gradually send those albums back to the universe. The healthy human brain can hold all the memories you need for more than one lifetime, but it also on it’s own, everynight, as a form of self care, forgets certain things.
While cycling I can bike around familiar routes in a bubble of nostalgia, every time, for the rest of my life. Duty, guilt, loyalty, survival to all these carefully made patterns of associations as my motivation. Or I can clean the house and let new patterns form, fresh patterns, perhaps familiar but renewed. Maybe I’ll build back the exact same set of pop up thoughts and emotions I ‘ve always had, or just maybe I’ll build back a pattern that serves me better right now. So like they say in yoga, this is now another focus of my cycling practice.
The Bike Karma Bicycle and Cycling Stories Podcast 