Riding as Defiance: Riding to Live

ON MARCH 12, 2024 BY PHOTOMOTOMAN WAWAIN MOTORCYCLING

This will be my final article in relation to this subject. The only reason this article is being written is in response to reading Mark Barnes, PhD’s book, Why We Ride.

Throughout my life I realize I have maintained an attitude of defiance. That isn’t to say that I don’t appreciate rules. Rules make life less complicated, more accepting to the expectations of what the ‘group’, whomever that might be, think is the norm. Rules are comforting. But why should ‘difference’ create discomfort? Why can we not readily accept that ‘our’ interpretation of what is normal may not be correct, or even sensible?

Why do we demean people who take risks for doing something that is unusual? Is it our discomfort or is it our dissatisfaction with normality? I had a friend who chose to buy a sailboat, a quite small sailboat, and take his family on an adventure that spanned four continents and almost six years of their life. People could not wait to criticize his choice as endangering his family, being irrational, irresponsible and self-possessed. His wife and children thought otherwise. They were confident that they would overcome any and all challenges and obstacles. Their children grew up to be self-confident, innovative, independent and extremely well-balanced. They did not live in fear, rather they grabbed fear by the neck and wrestled the life out of it.

I envied them. They had the courage to live life to the fullest. To experience whatever life might throw at them. I thought them to be adventurous, alive and thriving on finding uniqueness, beauty, and nature at its most raw and invigorating.

But then, I have always been a bit different. It’s not something that I can put a pin in and identify. I know that my ‘difference’ and my motivations seem to some to require rigorous examination like the observance of an dangerous insect specimen. And at times I have known that some have felt that way. It never bothered me. I appreciate not being the ‘mean’ of anything. As an outlier I often seek uniqueness, not just in myself, but in others. Unique is interesting. I don’t care to be representative of any group, rather I prefer abstract thoughts and things. Life, with all its prescriptions and expectations can simply be stultifying, boring, mundane. Who wants mundane? I would much rather ask myself, – what if?

Often, people associate my difference with being irrational, radical, or eccentric. I don’t see it that way at all. And I want to make a distinction between being different and being aberrant. Tell people that I relish driving long distances to remote locations and experiencing what to them may seem as uncomfortable or dangerous activities, and you soon find yourself as an outsider. Some people actually act as though even being in your company poses risk. ‘Don’t you dare associate with him. Just imagine, what he might conceive of next?’

I have often found that the value of experiencing risk, far exceeds its dangers. It provides confidence, an appreciation that you can manage, whatever the situation may present. It is precisely during the moments when you are in that moment, that I feel and have felt most alive. Every sensory input, every neural synapse, every visceral impulse becomes a living memory that stays alive inside you. No vicarious thrill comes close. Risk amplifies living, knowing that you improved your capacity to endure, to experience, to feel.

Pain is not to be avoided, for without pain we would never know joy. Pain lets us understand our limitations, physically and emotionally. It is to be appreciated, for in every experience comes understanding. It is possible to not just endure pain, but to accept it as a part of life and existence. I have had a great deal of pain, physical pain in my life, and I have learned more about myself because of it. It has not lessened my desire for adventure but made me appreciate it more. It has improved my skill, my situational awareness, especially in relation to noticing and acknowledging risk.

As I get older, I feel like I have a need to be even more defiant. You can’t do that, people say. It’s irresponsible. You are being reckless, endangering yourself like that. Why climb? Why Dive? Why jump out of a plane? Why dive with sharks? Why do anything that isn’t mundane and fits you into a widget’s hole that keeps you safe inside an insurers risk matrix. 

I have my own theory in relation to defiance. It’s about time, and the lack of it. I will have all the time in the world when I’m gone. I don’t care if people think I’m defiant. I’m making my own statement. One that simply says, “I want to experience that. I want to know what that is like.” It is my response to prescription. I don’t care if people think I don’t fit into the box they’ve prescribed for me. I don’t have to rationalize my defiance. I am, and it is.

And if, in my defiance, I’m proved wrong. “I told you it was stupid for him to climb at his age!”, then so be it. In their mundane, responsible and tethered life, they will have found solace in safety, but in so doing come to their end wondering, what if I had done that? What if I had experienced that?

I will find solace in the unusual, the exceptional thing, the defiance of everything normal, expected and pragmatic. I want people to say, “You know, I never thought he’d make it as far as he did.

Life is for living. Not watching. So, stop worrying and go live it.