I like this thread. I can write all the crap I want it will be easy for you to avoid it.
Sorry in reflective mood…
I was in traffic this morning. Gridlock so I wasn’t going anywhere. I had Carol King spinning so I was in one of those stare into space what is the meaning of life moods. Don’t you just love Carol?
I noticed I was looking at my hands. Full of new and half healed cuts and stabs. Rough with calluses. fingernails that are kept way to short. I looked at them and realized I didn’t know the back of my hand. I never paid them any mind.
As I looked I saw my life in these hand. These hands are the tools I have used to get where I am today. Alive. With my hands I have broken all 10 commandments. I use them to raise my kids and love my wife. These hand change as I do.
At one point they where a sight to be hold. They where a 3-d relief map. Veins and tendons stretched like cables to the muscles of my fore arms. They where real weapons. They desired to be used. To build, destroy, to help heal and to forcefully damage. When the rest of me would break. When the loads where to big. When the marches would butcher my knees, when my back would twist and my mind would make me forget where I was out of pure exhaustion. Only to bring to a place where I would want to cry tell the team to fuck off and run home I knew my hands where there. They never broke. No matter what load my hands would take it. They would bring me back. Only now do I realize that.
My hands are beautiful when I help my kids or support my wife. They are horrible when I see the blood still on them. Lady Mcbeth begged “out out damn spot!” but the spots stay. They stay and they don’t leave.
Now my hands are my father’s hands. Weak, scared and poor. My hands now make see I am my father. I don’t know how to feel about that. At once he is a funny, loving, great guy. The father all of us want. Too many hugs, too many kisses and lots of support. At the same time to weak to really protect you. Too scared to make a stand. He is man though. I will love him beyond all others but fight like hell to not be his twin. The direction I’m heading.
So I must go back to my hands. I must make them strong again. I hands that have never let my down. I must now build with them again. No just for me though. For all of us. I want to build us. This forum, my city, my country. The life of the scared is too comfortable. It cradles you in self-doubt and excuses. It covers you in a layer of fat that keeps your warm and protects your heart.
I am lost how. One pair of horribly ill fitting cycling shoes, cracked helmet, one beautiful bike that is being kept from me do to debt, a pair of cycling shorts that are wearing through, one great pair of running shoes, and a forum. Not a lot and nothing more coming but tools nonetheless.
I am turning too my hands.
