Telling the Story
Usually, most cyclists don't want to discuss the topic of crashing. Why? Some possibilities:
- It raises a basic fear. Our brain can be highly skilled at shutting down an anxiety-raising step, or potential step, even before the anxiety reaches our consciousness. How welcome or unwelcome is fear, for you? Why?
- It would be embarrassing. If revealing thoughts and feelings about crashing raises the fear that you'll be judged negatively by someone, your brain may again shut things down. But why does someone else's (incorrect) opinion of you have such power?
- It increases the possibility of a crash. For those of you who are superstitious, this feels true. But what's superstition? Could this conclusion be driven by a belief that you can't manage the basic fear that will arise if you talk about crashing, and if you're scared you're more likely to crash? If so, could your skill in managing your fear change?
- It doesn't seem "worth it." Given all the possible downsides, why bother? What's the point?
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The point is that, as stressful as it may be, revealing yourself—particularly to those you trust, and sometimes even to those you don't—works. Telling the story, your story, gives voice to what's within you. It keeps those thoughts and feelings from endlessly throwing themselves against the bars of a cage in your mind, a racket that you may be tuned into or may have learned to tune out. It can relieve some of that pressure. It can create an opportunity for a basic, normal fear to be transformed into something else —because, with it now outside of you, with someone else hearing it, your relationship to it has changed. And it gives someone the opportunity to share their empathy for you. The eminent psychiatrist Irv Yalom, in his book, "Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death," writes, "One can offer no greater service to someone facing [the fear of] death than to offer him or her your sheer presence." Give someone the chance to offer that to you.
It could start with you saying where you were when you heard about a crash. It could start with you talking about the thoughts and feelings that are running through you about your own riding. Or your friend's. Or your child's. It could start with you talking about how you cope. It could even start with a be-careful-that-it's not-insensitive joke. (Woody Allen famously said, "I'm not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens.") Just start where you are. It may feel like a tough climb, but just try to get to that next 12 percent grade sign, and then the next one. And the next.
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(Re-)Engaging Fully With Your Riding
Living with the risk of crashing has much to do with the meaning you make of that risk. If, in response to being confronted with the risk and the feelings associated with it, you allow yourself to move in the direction of "there's nothing I can do about it," you may fall toward a state of what the psychologist Martin Seligman calls "learned helplessness," a state of little or no motivation and a potential precursor to depression. Yalom quotes the psychiatrist Otto Rank, who said, "Some refuse the loan of life to avoid the debt of death."
On the other hand, after any needed period of mourning or other emotional processing, you can use seeing, hearing about, or remembering the possibility of a crash as what Yalom calls an "awakening experience" and "existential shock therapy." Any confrontation with death, or our fear of death, can enrich life—if we make that choice. What might that mean, for you? It might mean going for it in your riding, atop a secure base, built from solid physical and mental skills and a good ride. It might mean what Yalom calls "rippling," which he has found "singularly powerful" to counter our distress at the transience of life:
"Rippling refers to the fact that each of us creates—often without our conscious intent or knowledge—concentric circles of influence that may affect others for years, even for generations....[it] does not necessarily mean leaving behind your image or your name...attempts to preserve personal identity are always futile....Rippling, as I use it, refers instead to leaving behind something from your life experience; some trait; some piece of wisdom, guidance, virtue, comfort that passes on to others, known or unknown."
And, it might mean one more thing. Ted King, pro cyclist for the Liquigas-Cannondale team, tweeted this after Weylandt's crash: "Prayers going where they need to go. Go tell someone you love them and mean it." Connecting more deeply with those with whom you are close may be the best move of all.
Be safe, be well, be alive!
More: Important Safety Tips for Commuting by Bike
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