riding is my only hope

I ride my motorcycle because I feel joyful and free when I do.

I also ride my motorcycle because it helps me to not think about the multiple crises we are experiencing. If I give the world too much thought, I will drown. When I was younger, I tried to make a difference. I have been an advocate and change-agent for one thing or another for most of my life. Maybe I’ve had some impact. Maybe not.

But I don’t have the energy to fight anymore.

I can’t imagine the carnage in what used to be Holy Lands. I don’t want to imagine it. I have Jewish friends. I have Muslim friends. I have been to Palestine. I lived in the United Arab Emirates for eighteen years.

I can’t fathom what drove Russia, besides Putin, to attack Ukraine. I don’t understand the conflicts in Africa. I can’t wrap my head around Syria, Iran, Brazil, China, the disUnited States and the divisions in my own relatively calm country, Canada. Healthcare, climate change, the injustice system, food shortages, floods, famine, fire, civil war, refugees, pandemics, inflation, turmoil, strikes, shortages. The cost of everything. The cost of human lives lost, the cost of our lost humanity.

So I go out on my bike and ride. And I write about riding  because I am unable to process everything else and still stay sane and above water. I don’t listen to the news. The news is a deep black hole of insoluble problems and human suffering. Bullet-riddled babies. Hostages, Hatred. People under siege. Bombing, Killing, Blockades. I can’t bear it. Sometimes I feel ashamed to be alive.

I am unable to do anything about any of this other than  to breathe and stay afloat and create feelings of joy and freedom when I ride my motorcycle. So that’s what I do, because it’s all I can do. I can’t fix the world.

But, I think, perhaps if I am peaceful, peace will spread. Maybe, by way of a miracle, the positive energy tied to the free and joyful feelings of riding will somehow speak for me amidst this deafening chaos and calamity.

It’s lunacy, I know, but riding has become my only hope.

© 2023 Susan Macaulay. I invite you to share my poetry and posts widely, but please do not reprint, reblog or copy and paste them in their entirety without my permission. Thank you.

even in prison there’s space between the bars

note to self: do not argue with people whose purpose is to argue

even in prison there’s space between the bars

note to self: do not argue with people whose purpose is to argue