If you’ve grown up in the same big city, talking with the same people, eating at the same restaurants, sleeping in the same bed each night, and dragging yourself to the same job, what is your secular outlook on the world? Why do you answer to an alarm clock’s demands as it coaches you out of your cushioned, controlled, and protected environment? What is the point of driving on the cramped roads, in a hazardous world, just to find yourself in a familiar, mundane situation? Why take risks when we have the technology to communicate near the speed of light through a galaxy of networked optical cables? Take your medicine, get on Facebook, check your email, text a friend, start your car, wear a seat belt, wash your clothes, use manners, act polite, gossip, flush a toilet, change the oil in your car, buy a cell phone, blah, blah, blah. You can be spoon fed, don’t worry. You don’t even have to think for yourself, just let your computer do it for you. Why explore, learn history, or do math? It’s much faster and easier to just type it into the algorithm and let a computer solve your problem.
Don’t think freely or critically, it’s too hard and requires too much of a time commitment. It’s about getting from point A to point B as quickly and efficiently as possible, careful looking out the window, you might see the world. Maybe you’ll see someone broken down on the side of the road or a cyclist pedaling along the shoulder. Don’t wave though; they probably just want to remain unnoticed. Don’t offer your help and waste time; you’re already late to your job. The mundane one that forced you to brave the elements. Why do you sit in this cubical all day, shuffling papers? Oh yeah, you need the money to buy things. You need to buy the oil in your car so you can drive to work. You need to buy medicine so you can lose weight because you have been trying to save money by eating unhealthy. Unhealthy food is cheaper. The medicine makes you feel weird but at least you look good. That will save the time you would have spent exercising so you can have more for making money. You drive to work because it’s too much effort to get there any other way and it’s much faster. You might sweat or get dirty. Got to get from point A to point B, don’t make eye contact, they might start talking and hold you up. The stress is building, especially when you consider how much money you don’t have. Maybe you could take a pill to make the stress go away. Who cares if it causes your appetite increase, won’t the other pill counteract that?
It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.
Get out, lose everything, and tour on your bike. Here is the recipe.
Touring Ingredients:
3 cups optimism
2 cups confidence
1/2 cup exercise
1 cup courage
2 cups communication
1 teaspoon bike
1 cause
Preparation instructions.
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Add bike, cause, courage, exercise, and confidence into a large mixing bowl.
3. Whip into a viscous, yet fluid mixture which will slowly but surely solidify into something larger than itself. Although difficult, you can try force the mixture into a mold (*this may constrain the solution and affect the consistency of the final product.)
4. Place in oven to finalize the solidification. At this point, cover the current mixture in a thick coating of optimism.
5. Add coating of communication to the optimism topping and expect interesting results. Listen and learn from the resulting sounds.
6. Don't be alarmed at the formation of blood, sweat, and tears as the solution continues to mature.
7. Relax, enjoy, and live in the moment. As the product finalizes, the tangible slices of heavenly, serene scenes may melt into the crevasses of your memories but don't be sad, you can gather ingredients at a later date for another tour.
WARNING: Upon completion of recipe for the first time, expect your life to become simplified. Don't be surprised when you throw away large quantities of items from around your house that you now discover to be useless and obtrusive.
