8 Km. 23 °C. Cloudy day. As inside myself. The clouds are approaching and they come very close to the storm, inside me. I do uncombined things. I don’t have concentration. I have a possibility: one hour’s time to dedicate to myself. I decide to take the “Bartali” to cycle in nature,
searching for a green space in town, to breath above the pollution.
Life absorbs us in its frenzy and in tensions in the toughest days. Sometimes it absorbs all our energies and it exhausts us. Mental and physical energies. I feel the need to move, the bicycle is my means. I cross the urban streets to look for infinite varieties of green. Now I only want to ride in silence.
Movement is life, the staticity is death
The physiotherapist where I went to do exercises said so. It was, among many, one of the sentences on the flying post-it attached to my wall-paper in the kitchen. It has remained there a year and a half, to remember me that we can’t become lazy. In the body as in the mind.
Together with me run the elms with their high and distinct hights, that in spring have giant and brilliant leaves. The freshness, when I ride my bicycle, becomes clean oxygen, over the clouds full of pollution. Far from the traffic, in Parco della Cascine, I find a green space in town. I listen to the sound of the wheels that flow on pieces of dry leaves.
A bicycle “dispelsthoughts” in nature : to observe without thinking.
Only to observe the green colour, to feel the freshness above, it is a benefit for our mind. It wakes us up, it teaches us to react to falls, to return on the saddle. It is a life input. Through the rhythm of a bike, I find the ideal movement to live. To prolong the sight far towards the meadowland framed by trees. To prolong towards the divine that resides in us.
Pedalling the heavy thoughts slip to the ground. Nature recuperates them and it neutralizes them.
It is easy to distract oneself with the surrounding landscape that captures us. Your soul breaths regularly, it relaxes you. You need less: a field in flower, a profound look in the sky, the refreshing air. You can try when you are in a bad humor. When things don’t come together and the lamp has blown. You can try to take a bike, to get away from traffic, from sounds, from the thougts. It is there that you will find yourself.
Life is a mountain chain to climb. The ascent is long and thiring.
It takes time, the necessary time. Everyone has its rhythm of pedalling, of life. To speak about a ride in nature, in the monotonous landscapes of green spaces in town, is not a banality. It is to fix a moment of daily life that becomes necessity. It is the will to look inside oneself. To find oneself. To reconnect to the universe. It is to alllow oneself some time. It is to regenerate after the labours. To restitch the wounds.
Translated from the Italian by Eleonora Spada o.c.d.s.