While most people have learned that karma is a mythical idea of cause and effect, that it is the universal law underpinning ‘Fuck Around and Find Out,’ the yogis out there will tell you that karma is the way of action, and the practice of karma yoga is using one’s every day life, especially via athletic pursuits, to commune with the self to discover who you are. Picture a surfer stereotype.
When I started biking in the city to get from point A to point B, it was a practical solution to wasted hours standing on the L platform waiting for late-night trains to Brooklyn. Bike commuting was also fiscally responsible. A few cab rides on top of an unlimited-ride Metrocard could really put a dent in a person’s vice budget, and in my early twenties vices were considered self-care and sound investments in friends.
The first great bike benefit I felt was a sense of control. Few things frustrated me more than feeling held captive on a train stopped in the tunnel being held for “an unavoidable delay.” That regular helpless, powerless condition of the subway rider far outweighed the sporadic moments when the trains ran quickly, on time, and without incident. Of course, when everything works smoothly it rarely leaves an impression. Objectively, most often the subway was fine. But whenever it wasn’t, the existential torment twisted me inside. I had done everything right! I had left on time only to be thwarted by the MTA and circumstance. Biking brought regularity and determinism. If I was late, it was my own dam fault. (And yes, I was still often late for things — biking didn’t solve that problem.)
After years of biking around, other practical benefits emerged like improved fitness and better mental mapping. Infrequent soft benefits brought value — such as discovering a good store or restaurant simply because you pass by it. Randomly seeing friends and colleagues was fun and exciting. Yet the greatest benefit of all was, undeniably, the feeling: to be an agile vehicle in gridlock, to be coasting down a bridge and leaning into a corner, to be getting soaked on a ride home where getting soaked is okay, or to be racing the memory of yourself and the times when you’re just a little bit faster than you were yesterday. There are days when I don’t want to get on the bike with a heavy bag, when the last thing I want is to have to push my own ass up a bridge in the wet and cold or the hot and muggy, when the wind makes you hate the laws of physics and the nature of the universe itself. Sometimes, those rides become the best ones. The pedal push drags me out of the feeling hole, and wind on my face makes me smile. I discover that I am still myself, and I remember who I am.