Sex

 Here are 32 reasons why bicycling is better than sex:

1. You can bicycle in public and not get arrested.

2. It’s okay to bicycle with children.

3. Protected cycling is actually better than unprotected cycling.

4. Finishing first in bicycling is a good thing.

5. Bicycling by yourself isn't embarrassing.

6. Cycling with a large group of people isn’t weird.

7. No unplanned pregnancies from cycling.

8. Your colleague didn’t get fired for biking with their students.

9. You can bicycle even when it’s not hard.

10. You can bicycle even when it’s not wet.

11. No one cherry-picks Biblical passages to judge who you ride bikes with.

12. The only rash to worry about in cycling is road rash.

13. You rarely have to pay for bike riding.

14. You can watch online cycling videos at work.

15. Old people on bikes is charming, not kinda gross.

16. It’s cool for mom or dad to teach you to ride a bike.

17. You can ride a bike all day long.

18. Bicycle lube is never flavored.

19. Cycling with strangers is perfectly wholesome.

20. Solo cyclists can bike with no hands.

21. You can ride a bike on the beach, no problem.

22. You can ride a bike drunk, no problem.

23. No one minds if you fall asleep right after a vigorous bike ride.

24. If the ride was good for you, it's good.

25. Having more than one bike is not complicated.

26. “Rubber side down” is simply good advice.

27. There’s no such thing as a bad bike ride.

28. If you don’t want to bike, no one can force you.

29. Professional cyclists only have to shave their legs.

30. You don’t have to be interesting, charming, good-looking, or rich to ride a bike.

31. That video of you biking is on the internet, so what?

32. I’m going on a bike ride right now, who cares?

Almost

You almost got run down by a bicycle as you were stepping into the crosswalk.

You almost tripped over that dog’s leash when the person walking him jogged by.

You almost died when you heard that Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift got engaged.

You almost had a heart attack when you saw that giant spider on the wall.

You almost fainted when you realized that there were only five more days of summer

You almost cut your hair; it happened just the other day.

You almost left your phone at the restaurant.

You almost overslept and missed your flight.

You almost dropped your keys down the rain gutter.

You almost got expelled in junior high school.

You almost failed your Driver’s test.

You almost sliced your finger off cutting that bagel.

You almost drank that spoiled milk.

You almost didn’t renew your passport in time.

You almost got arrested.

You almost threw up after you ate that sandwich.

You almost wrecked your car.

You almost got hit in the head by that foul ball at the stadium.

You almost lost your wallet.

You almost drowned.

You almost left the house with your zipper down.

You almost insulted your boss and got fired.

You almost choked on your lunch.

You almost wet your pants.

You almost weren’t born.

You almost got lost on the way to the event.

You almost got run over by a car, a bus, a truck, and a scooter.

You almost didn’t even apply for the job you eventually interviewed for and were hired by.

You almost never met your soulmate.

You almost were scammed by that online phishing attempt.

You almost went blind staring at the sun.

You almost stepped on the hornet’s nest.

You almost burnt the hell out of your hand on the hot skillet.

You almost picked up and drank the wrong drink at the bar.

You almost made a fool of yourself again.

You almost did, but you didn’t!

Tricked

• I’ll just get out of bed; that’s all.
• Since I’m up, I may as well brush my teeth.
• I guess I’ll get dressed then, but that’s it.
• A cup of coffee wouldn’t hurt.  I suppose I’ll read the paper as I drink it.
• I’m awake now, so why not ride my bike to the yoga studio?
• Once I’m here, there’s no sense in not rolling out my mat.
• I’ll just do one sun salutation.  And another.  And then all five of the first version.
• I’m just going to finish the three of the second version and then sit.
• How about the first two standing poses, just to open my sinuses.
• Almost halfway through the standing postures, it’s easy enough to finish them out.
• A couple of sitting poses, just for flexibility’s sake.
• At this point, there’s no point in not completing the half-primary.
• The hardest part is over; I can coast through the remainder of the full primary.
• One, no two, no three backbends.  And then the finishing poses because, sure.

This is how you trick yourself into doing things.  You just do the next thing and then the next after that and the next after that.  Before you realize what you’ve done, you’ve done it.

Life is like this from the beginning.  Divide that first cell, and then those two, those four, those eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four and on and on an on.  Next thing you know, you’re an infant, then a toddler, a little kid, a child, a teenager, a young adult, a grown up, an old person, and finally, you’re no more.

But you were when you were and the way that you were was by one step at a time until all those steps added up to a life of accomplishment—or at least, action.

It begins every day by getting out of bed and the surest way to do that is to pretend that it’s all that you’re doing, ha-ha, tricked you!

Aspirations

I’d like to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, but only so I could turn it down like Jean-Paul Sartre or Bob Dylan.  

It would be cool to be the first person on Mars, but mainly so I could leave behind the billionaires who arrived on the space ship with me.

To defeat death is a worthy aspiration, but if you did so, then you’d fail in the effort, wouldn’t you?

When I was little, I wanted to grow up to be a doctor; now that I’m big, I’d be happy with just having a primary care physician who would see me occasionally.

I hope to die with all my own teeth; if that’s not possible, I guess I’ll settle for all my own fingers.

Many people want to be rich and famous; not me; rich is plenty.

My goal is to read 100 books this year; do matchbooks count?

I’d like to learn to play the piano before I die; I’ll wait for the terminal diagnosis to start practicing.

Sky-diving is not on my “bucket list;” not having a “bucket list” is, though.

I don’t want to die alone; but if the alternative is to expire at the hands of violent zombies, I’ll take it.

I would like to be remembered as someone memorable, preferably by people who haven’t lost their memories.

I want to have made the world a better place as a result of my life; failing that, I suppose making it a better place because of my death would be okay.

I had hoped to be an Olympic hopeful; now, I’ll settle for simply not being hopeless.

I’ve made my peace with not seeing world peace in my lifetime; fingers crossed that I miss out on World War III, as well.

I’d like to write a published novel.  I’m thinking Tolstoy’s War and Peace would be a good one.

If all else fails, at least I hope to end this piece right here.

Obvious

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I’m up in a tree.

For all intents and purposes, my goals and objectives are one and the same.

Not to split hairs, but the follicle is divided in two.

At the end of the day, it’s nighttime.

In the long run, it’s too far to go.

Don’t get me wrong, that would be a mistake.

Just to clarify, things will be made clearer.

In any event, something happens.

When push comes to shove, get your hands off of me.

Let’s put it on the line and get straight.

I’m going to take a shot in the dark and hope not to spill the whiskey on my shirt.

Throwing caution to the wind, it sure is breezy here.

Nine times out of ten, you’ll achieve 90% success.

More often than not, what’s likelier to occur is what happens.

As far as I can tell, that’s all I am saying.

In my experience, those things happened to me.

Unless I’m mistaken, I’m right.

As far as I’m concerned, I have some concern.

If you were in my shoes, I’d be barefoot.

If you were me, I’d be someone else.

Objectively speaking, I’m not biased.

From an impartial standpoint, I won’t take sides.

According to the evidence, the answer is evident.

Considering both sides, there’s a left and a right

It’s a good bet that the odds are in your favor.

You’d be foolish to do something stupid.

The right decision is the one that’s correct.

Obviously, it’s self-evident.

All things considered, we’ve thought of everything.

With an eye toward the future, I’m looking at next year.

Based on past results, what has happened has happened.

After a full review, we’ve looked at things again.

If we could do it all over again, we’ll have done it once more.

If we’re lucky, we’ll we will be fortunate.

When all is said and done, we must remain silent now.

Chance

In the classic Marlon Brando film, On the Waterfront, his character, Terry Malloy, a former prize-fighter turned “muscle” for the mob, reproaches his gambler brother, Charlie, who forced him to throw a  pre-championship bout, with the famous quote “I coulda been a contender.”  

If only Charlie had looked out for him a little bit, instead of making him take dives for the short-end money, then everything would have been different; Terry could have been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what he reckons he is.

Assuming the human free will is a thing (a contentious claim to be sure), then we all have similar watershed moments in our lives, when a single decision or chance happenstance determines our own future or even that of the world.

If only Gavrilo Princip hadn’t assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand on the 28th of June, 1914, World War I might never have happened.  If only Barack Obama hadn’t made fun of Donald Trump at the Washington Correspondents’ Dinner on April 30, 2011, we might never have seen the first, not to mention the second ,Trump Presidency.  And in even weightier matters, if only scientist Percy Spencer hadn’t left his candy bar near the high-powered vacuum tube called a magnetron he was experimenting with in 1945, the world could have avoided the horror known as the microwave oven.  

It seems to me that the only way to account for these possibilities is to assume an infinite number of possible worlds in which all the potential outcomes do occur; there is a parallel Universe out there where WWI never happened, another where Trump never even runs for President, and still another in which popcorn is still only made on the stove.

This means that the life that each of us is living is only one of and endless number of experiences that are being had by other versions of ourselves; so don’t rush to make that yellow light; there’s another you that does.

Heaven

The version of Heaven where you sit at the right hand of God and hang out with all your dead loved ones sounds more like Hell to me. 

It’s clearly the worst family reunion ever, a Thanksgiving dinner without mashed potatoes and beer and is there even football on?  If so, what team gets to win?  

(Presumably, if God gets to decide, then it’s going to be the Pittsburgh Steelers every year, but what if I’m a Minnesota Vikings fan?  Do they still lose consistently in the post-season afterlife?  If so, seems like a pretty crummy Paradise for folks from the Land of 10,000 lakes.)

Eternal life of any sort is a nightmare.  Even your very own heaven with 10,000 virgins or George Clooneys or Toms of Finland is going to get old after a few millennia; sure, most of us these days can waste endless hours scrolling on the internet, but even that will get tiresome eventually.

The only possible way for Heaven to be heavenly is if there’s no longer any sense of individual self, which means that it’s impossible for a person to experience Heaven because such an experience requires that very individual.  “I” can’t experience Heaven because the “experience” of Heaven has to be an “experience” that “I” can’t have.

Let’s say, then, that Heaven is the merging of one’s individual consciousness into the Universal Consciousness (kind of re-inventing the Vedanta here); sounds good, but “I” am not the one having that experience because there’s no longer any “I.”  All the heavenly aspects are there: no pain, no sadness, no having to decide what to wear everyday, not even needing to floss!  But that’s precisely because “I” am not around anymore.

No doubt that this sort of non-existence sounds like Hell to some people, but again, here’s the beauty part: non-existence is also not an experience that anyone can have.  So if non-existence is Hell, then not to worry: you can’t experience that either.

Prepared

I’m preparing for the preparations; I’m planning on getting ready to get ready.

I’ll have a snack before dinner and a cocktail ahead of the time we start drinking.

A nap before bedtime is essential, as is a shower prior to my bath.

I’ll sign a pre-nup to my pre-nuptial agreement and a will which bequeaths my will to those named in my will.

I floss before flossing and brush my teeth twice—once for cleaning and another for whitening.

I always pre-heat my oven in preparation for heating it, don’t you?

Practicing your practice makes practice perfect; drafting a draft of your draft is how to draft.

You’ll want to warm up your engine in advance of warming your engine.  It’s always a good idea to consider your considerations before considering them.

And we all like to pre-func the pre-func, don’t we?

Let’s plan to plan and make sure we’re in shape to get in shape.

I’m going to sketch out my sketch before I sketch it.  I’m going to map out the map before mapping it.

Always do the pre-read before reading and be sure to watch the trailer in advance of seeing the film.

I like to ensure that I like a person before I commit to liking them.  And I’ll only show interest in someone I’m already interested in.

Of course, I clean my house before the cleaning lady comes.  I also mow the lawn to prepare for the landscaper.  And unless I’ve gone to the doctor, I won’t go to a doctor.

Who pre-rolls the pre-rolled joints?  How are pre-packaged snacks pre-packaged?  Can we solve the mystery of the pre-cooking of pre-cooked meals?

We need to talk about having a talk.  Let’s ride our bikes to go on a bike ride.  Then we can hike to our hike.

I’ve lived my entire life so far so as to live a life worth living; I’m just hoping I die before I am dead.

Absurd

Sometimes the blatant absurdity of it all just hits you.

You’re suddenly struck by how crazy it is to get out of bed in the pre-dawn just to ride your bike a couple miles uphill so you can spend an hour or so bending yourself into physical positions developed by an elderly Sanskrit scholar in Southern India for the youth of the Maharaja’s palace and made popular and available to Westerners because some hippies in the 1970s found their way to a tiny yoga shala in a small city of an out-of-the-way part of the country to study with a essentially unknown teacher who only taught locals at the time.

And even more bizarre is that you do this in a world where a former reality television star is President of a country whose military budget is larger than those of the next nine countries combined and in which it’s considered perfectly acceptable that grown men wearing pajamas and chasing a ball around a field surrounded by fifty thousand fans eating hot dogs and drinking beer earn a thousand times more a year than do the people teaching their children how to read and write.

And stranger still, this all happens on a planet whose climate, due in no small part to the activities of human beings, is changing so significantly that life, as all species have come to know it over the last 10 million years or so, is likely to no longer be possible within a hundred years or less and yet, nevertheless, nearly everyone just goes along as if everything is fine, nothing to worry about, no changes needed.

And if that isn’t weird enough, note that no matter what, it’s all going to be eradicated anyway when the sun eventually subsumes most of the solar system, so what’s the point really in the long run?

And then, to top it off, the freakiest part of all is here you are, writing about it.

Routine

I wake up at the same time (give or take 5 minutes) every day.

Like clockwork, I then totter to the bathroom, pee, and brush my teeth.  I put on my same yoga shorts, come downstairs, start my coffee, putting the Bialetti espresso pot on the large burner of the stove, the teakettle on the smaller.

I scoop the specified amount of dog food from the dog food bag, place the bowl at the identical spot on the floor, and routinely step back for the dog to eat.

I do my stomach exercises with the universally predictable and regular result.

I let the dog out into the backyard, where she essentially has the same experience.

I pour my coffee into the cup I use every day and add the same amount of water to make my morning Americano.

I sit in the same chair, at the same place by the table, open the Seattle Times replica edition on my laptop, and begin drinking my coffee.

The dog barks to be let in.  I rise to do so.

I finish my coffee after reading the online paper in the same order as always, including the same few comics and advice columns.

I put on the same stretch pants and wool jersey as every morning, leave the house  by the same door, take a bike (one of three) from the bike shed, and ride the identical route to the yoga studio, where I do pretty much the uniform series of postures every day.

I come home, shower and shave, unfailingly dress with a collared shirt, and then make one of several breakfast variations.  

I wash my dish or two, then, come rain or shine, walk the dog, the same six block route I take her on twice a day.

At home again, I sit in Vipassana meditation for 31 minutes.

Then, I dependably write a 327 word essay, which I afterwards, without fail, post online.

It’s different every time.

Winner

You don’t always have to win.

In fact, unless you sometimes lose, the very concept of winning no longer makes any sense.

For every thrilling victory, there needs to be a heartbreaking defeat; one of the most valuable contributions we can make to the fullness of human experience is to suffer such misfortunes.  Our own crushing loss enables another’s joyous win.

(As every fan of the 2014 Seattle Seahawks or 1992 Pittsburgh Pirates knows.)

People are too focused on being number one.  Being number two is pretty great and you don’t have to put up with so many press conferences and photo shoots.  For that matter, anywhere in the top ten is admirable and honestly, with on the order of 9 billion humans in the world, you can count yourself a great success if you’re anywhere in the top 100 million or so.

Besides, winning isn’t everything.  There’s also good sportsmanship, participating with integrity, and seeing others fail, as well.

The disappointment a small-market baseball fan might feel when their hometown team loses in the playoffs is surely tempered by the satisfaction of seeing the New York Yankees not even make the post-season.  That can lift a person’s spirits all through the hot stove days.

This obsession with winning is probably exacerbated by the contemporary political systems, which yields only one victor in each election.  Maybe an alternative, therefore, would be to have the term of service be based on a percentage of the vote.  So, for instance a Presidential candidate who received, let’s say, 54% of the popular vote would occupy the Oval Office for that amount of time, whereas the other finishers would fill in the remaining 46%.  This could be done on a weekly or even daily basis.  It sure would make for far more interesting and engaging press conferences at the very least.

Alternately, let’s just abandon the value of winning altogether; if the winner is a loser, then all the losers win!

 

Regret

They say you only really regret the things you don’t do, but on the contrary, I still don’t regret not going to Burning Man nor do I feel bad that I’ve never shaved my balls with a straight razor.

I do, however, harbor some regret that I gave up my dad’s Pittsburgh Steelers’ season tickets after he died.

So, it’s hard to say, although I will admit that I do regret whatever regrettable things I’ve done or not done over the years.  

If I could take back purposely spilling orange juice on my classmate Lexi Scoulas in fifth grade to prove to my friends that I didn’t have a crush on her (when, in fact, I did), I would and I also wish that would have spent all my savings buying Apple stock at .36 cents a share in 1995 instead of purchasing a used 1963 Plymouth Barracuda that I sold two years later for a  loss.

But that’s life, you know?  It’s impossible to make it to the end of one’s days with no regrets (unless, of course, the dementia really kicks in), so perhaps that best strategy is to not make things worse by regretting whatever regrets one does eventually have.

The Pragmatist philosopher, William James argues that our ability to feel regret is evidence that we have free will, because, after all, if you couldn’t have done otherwise than you did, why regret it?

That makes sense but it wouldn’t explain why you regret finishing that entire bag of pistachio nuts; once it was opened, there was obviously no alternative, after all.

Maybe it’s a matter of regretting the state of affairs that gives rise to the action that feels regrettable.  If that’s the case, then I guess what I regret most is the Big Bang.  If it hadn’t been for that fluctuation in the quantum field or whatever, then I never would have spilled that orange juice on Lexi Scoulas.

Or written this!

Maker

Everyone’s on the make; they’ve all got their ‘side hustle;’ they’re hacking their lives to maximize their potential and be all that they can be.

Yawn.

I mean, sure, no one wants to squander a moment of this wild and precious life we’ve been granted, but people, please.  

Relax.

A meaningful life is not to be found in living every second to its fullest expression; sometimes, a little downtime is okay.

Breathe.

You can have your double-shot espresso energy drink protein bar for breakfast if you must and get in your six mile run before it’s light out but what’s so bad about lingering on the edge of sleep for a bit before enjoying a simple cup of drip and listening to the birds sing?

Tweet-tweet.

There are 1440 minutes in a day; take way 8 hours for sleeping, that leaves 960; another couple hours for eating and bathing, and you’re down to 840; subtract the time typically spent searching for one’s keys and phone, and what’s left?  Ten minutes of focused activity per day seems about right.

Enough.

The highly-scheduled life of your average ambitious high school Junior, who takes Advanced Placement classes, serves on student council, plays in the school jazz band, volunteers at the library tutoring math, has a part-time job, is in a serious relationship, and cares for their immigrant grandparent on the week-ends is something to admire, but isn’t their classmate, who cut school and hangs out in the park having a better time?

Really.

No one, it’s said, ever sits up on their deathbed and announces, “I wish I’d spent more time at the office,” but what’s the alternative?  Does anyone suddenly opine: “If only spent more time asleep?”  “If only I’d devoted more hours to reading the “Comments” sections in online newspapers!”  “Why didn’t lurk on social media more?”

Hmmm…

Life’s too short to drink bad wine, but it’s way too long to go full out all the time.

Right?

Monism

 If God is infinite, then the Creator cannot be separate from the Creation.

An infinite God necessarily implies monism; if something is everything, then there’s nothing it can’t be, so there must be only One Thing, namely God (or Nature, as our old friend, Spinoza put it.)

That One Thing can, of course (again, as Spinoza pointed out), have different attributes, but these are just appearances, different manifestations of the One.  Thus, for instance, it may seem as if human beings and God are separate, but that’s like saying that steam and ice aren’t both water, simply because they are different forms of H2O.

Then, if Monism is the case, it seems like Idealism must be the case, as well.  If there’s only One Thing, it has to be mind, not matter, because whereas matter can be accounted for as an appearance in the mind, mind cannot be accounted for as a function of matter without it being something different from matter.

The Materialist can contend that mind cannot exist without matter, but they are still committed to there being two things, one material and the other immaterial.  The Idealist, by contrast, is able to assert that it’s all mind, all the way down, no materials turtles needed at all.

So, if God is infinite, then there’s only One Thing, and that Thing is mind.  Q.E.D.

But maybe God is not infinite.  Maybe God is more like the petty tyrant of the Old Testament or the version we get from Christian televangelists who has small-minded preferences for one sexual orientation or political party over another.  If that’s the case, then sure, the Creation and the Creator can be separate, but it makes for an awfully constrained conception of God.

It also makes possible for the Creation to be good, while the Creator isn’t, like with Picasso or Kanye West.

The Monist perspective, by contrast, ensures that if there’s any good in the world, then God’s all good.

Lazy

It’s not that I don’t want to do anything; I just don’t want to do what I don’t want to do.

I’m fully motivated to take naps, ride my bike to the library, or graze the refrigerator; it’s just that I have no inclination to weed the garden, mop the floor, or organize all the loose photographs in those boxes on my bookshelves.

Is this laziness?

Honestly, I’m too lazy to figure it out.

What I take to be the virtuous part of me aspires to action; I know I’d feel better about myself if I took care of business.  But what I believe to be the lesser aspect of me is not persuaded.  It would rather wallow in self-recrimination than do what it probably oughtta.

Maybe I’m held hostage by a neo-liberal quasi-Victorian free-market capitalistic conception of what’s valuable.  It’s all about action and accomplishment or else.

Maybe our collaborative community-based hunter-gatherer ancestors would be perfectly cool with my lack of initiative; after all, I’ve got a full belly and a roof over my head for the night.  Why not take a break?

I mean it’s not like I’m leaving dirty dishes in the sink; my yard, while not the tidiest on the block, is not a health hazard.  It still floss every day, for heaven’s sake.

Still, it’s obvious that I’m not doing all I could to make the world—much less my own life—a better place.

How much is enough?  Is it adequate that at least I’m not making the world—much less my own life—a significantly worse place?

Things might be better for everyone if the richest and most powerful people in the world were a little—if not a lot—lazier.  

Imagine if world leaders got up tomorrow and instead of working so hard to oppress people and drop bombs on their enemies, they all just said, “Nah, feeling too lazy to do so.”

Maybe we’re all not lazy enough!

Desire

I desire to not desire what I desire.  I want to not want what I want.

It’s a paradox wrapped in an oxymoron.  A contradiction contradicting itself.

This aspiration is particularly difficult when you’re confronted, all day long, with efforts to make you desire something: an email from your favorite bicycle goods retailer, offering a discount for purchasing an item that you don’t really need, but would be cool to have; a text message from a friend inviting you to an event that would probably be fun; a coupon in the mail for a home service you’ve been putting off because you can live without it, even though it would be nicer to have it done.

I didn’t know I wanted it until I was persuaded that I did.  I didn’t have the active desire until it was activated by an outside influence.

So, is it really my own desire?  Or am I more like a passive host for the desire virus I’m infected by?

One of the Compatibilist responses to the “Problem of Free Will” is “Deep Self-Compatibilism.”  Essentially, the Compatibilist view is that we exercise what amounts to free will when we make choices that are motivated by our own desires (as opposed to compelled by outside forces beyond our control.)  The question raised by Deep Self-Compatibilism is “Are our desires really our own?”  Or “Do we really desire our desires.”

When you’re watching a football game and an ad appears for Dominos Pizza and before you know it, you’re ordering a large Double Cheese Crust Stuffed Meat-Lovers just like the one you saw onscreen, it’s not obvious that it’s really what you want.  Or at least want to want.

According to the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, we eliminate suffering in our lives by eliminating desire.  Of course, we need to desire to do so, which brings us back to that initial paradox all over again.

Makes me want just to be done with it.