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Published in PlanetBiker Magazine - Volume2 - Issue 4 |
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People don’t like change, as a general rule. When we’re not particularly satisfied with something, it’s just easier to ignore it or put up with it. Do that long enough and eventually we become resigned to the situation…stuck in a rut, dissatisfied, not really happy, but it’s tolerable so we let it continue. I’ve come to view uneasiness or dissatisfaction with something in my life as a tap on the shoulder. And I’ve learned to pay attention to those taps on the shoulder. Here’s a little story for ya.
I rode motorcycles as a kid. Some of us were fortunate enough to have minibikes. We weren’t fortunate enough to have minibikes with useful accessories like brakes and throttle cables, but we made do by riding with one hand down on the carb working the throttle directly, and dragging our sneakers to stop. Back then brake shoes cost more than sneakers. I graduated to a Honda 50, with a vacuum cleaner tube for an exhaust pipe. I’m still not sure exactly how I killed that one, but I remember oil squirting out the side of the engine. There were several other machines involved in my adolescence, but then one day I no longer had a motorcycle. It just worked out that way. I still wanted one, but I didn’t want it bad enough. I wanted things like a house and a wife more. So I got those things instead. It really wasn’t planned or well-thought out. That’s just the direction I went.
Years went by, bigger houses, nicer cars, vacations, and a great kid to raise…. working hard to pay the bills and maintain the lifestyle. I never lost the desire to have a motorcycle, but there was always a reason why I didn’t really need one right now. Sometimes the urge to ride would get really strong, but I wouldn’t do anything about it and I’d push it off into the back of my mind with all of those other thoughts of things I’d really like to do. I was too busy living the American dream to enjoy life. Then one word changed it all. That word was “malignant”. Everyone is familiar with that word and nobody much likes what it means, but I want you to know that it takes on special significance when it is used in reference to one’s very own self.
And then the weirdness starts. You have to break the news to people in your life. That’s no fun. You have to clear the decks and throw away your social calendar and replace it with your calendar of doctor’s appointments, because treatment is going to dominate your existence for awhile or until you cease to exist, whichever comes first. People who mean well start telling you it’s going to be fine, which makes you want to scream because they don’t know if it’s going to be fine. How could they? You don’t know if it’s going to be fine, and not even your doctors know if it’s going to be fine. You want to ask those people where they got that important bit of information that the experts seem to be lacking. But you don’t, because they do mean well, and part of the weirdness is that it’s you who may be dying but you are spending a fair bit of time worrying about other people’s reactions and feelings. And some people you considered friends vanish. You eventually figure out that they’re the ones who know it might not be fine but they don’t know what to say to you, so they avoid you. That hurts, but it happens. (Here’s a clue…if you ever know someone in this situation, don’t avoid them, and don’t sugarcoat the situation. Just talk to them. Admit it if you find it hard to talk about…they will guide you and let you know what’s up for discussion and what isn’t.)
In my case the prognosis (that means the doctor’s best guess) as to my odds of survival were about 50/50. Things happened quickly…there was an operation…and then there was news that it was going to take another, more involved operation because they didn’t like what they found the first time and needed to back off and regroup, or something. I’m not sure exactly to this day what that was all about. Narcotics will do that to you. Whatever the reason, I had a few weeks until I was going under the knife again, and I was doing a fair bit of thinking about the whole situation. Mostly, I was thinking about what I wanted to do in the time I could count on.
I had this idea in my head, which was that I wanted to dance with my daughter at her wedding, so I figured I needed to make it at least that long. She was only nine years old at the time, so I really needed to get cured if I was going to get there. That sounded like an okay strategy to me. I was also in need of some brightness of the future. My marriage was not doing well even before all of this happened, and I figured this might be the straw that broke the camel’s back, (and that’s pretty much how it turned out.) In general, my looking glass wasn’t looking too good. I decided that what I needed was a motorcycle. I’d always wanted to do a reenactment of “Then Came Bronson” and go ride randomly around the country, and just see what life brought my way. The little voices were telling me that if I ever wanted to do it I’d best get on with it. A shrink would probably say I wanted to escape, and that might be true, but whatever the reason, it looked really appealing to me. So before I went back into the hospital, I bought a motorcycle. I couldn’t ride it, but I could have them park it in the garage so I could look at it. And I could mentally picture myself out on the road, doing that Bronson thang. The plan was that I was going to get better and go ride around the country like I’d always dreamed of doing somewhere off in the back of my mind. Looking back now, I think that was pretty ambitious for a guy who couldn’t even sit on a motorcycle at the time, but hey, cancer treatment is no walk in the park and I needed the mental crutch of something great to look forward to.
That was six years ago. The bike has a lot of miles on it now, and it’s seen a lot of state lines. If there’s any cancer left in me, they can’t find it. The wife is now an ex-wife, which was probably inevitable anyway, and we’re both happier for it. I don’t make a living sitting behind a desk anymore, because that’s not where I want to spend the rest of my life. I work in a bike shop, and I don’t make nearly as much money as I once did. I traded a bigger bank account for a bigger life.
I live in a different world now. In this world, I don’t get angry in traffic. People who used to annoy me don’t anymore. To get me upset, something has to be a big deal, and I have a much better sense of what constitutes a big deal these days. As far as I’m concerned, there just ain’t many big deals out there. I have a sideline business making bike videos (shameless plug here for www.videobiker.com) that grew out of doing my Bronson trips, which is pretty cool and a lot of fun, and I’ve never once had to drag myself to work at my job in the bike shop because it’s a fun place to work. I’d always had an idea that I’d like to be a writer but I never tried BC (before cancer). If you’re reading this you know that now I’m doing it. These days I’m doing exactly what I want to do in life, and now I know that if I don’t like how things are going, all I have to do is make a change.
See, we all get those taps on the shoulder, telling us we need to make a change. I once had it explained to me like this: The Great Spirit sends you those taps on the shoulder, and you’re supposed to listen. If you ignore the taps on the shoulder long enough, eventually the Great Spirit will send the Mack truck to run your butt over just to get your attention.
I ignored my taps on the shoulder for too long. Cancer was the truck. If you’re getting any taps on the shoulder you might want to think about it, just in case there’s any trucks headed your way.
Best regards, Joe |