Lost In Thought

Have I ever talked about “Blind Cycling”? Probably not.

I am frequently lost in thought; I often miss the station I’m supposed to get off; I take the express train instead of the local one, get on the train going the wrong direction, and the list goes on.

I’m not only absent minded about where I am going, but also what I wear. Many a times have I left the house in my slippers, worn odd socks, worn my skirt back to front, because while my body exists in the physical world and functions to accomplish daily tasks, my mind has already removed itself to enter the realm of my vast imagination. (A bit Alice-like I suppose). I am a classic introspective introvert, a group often linked to the “absent minded professor”.

This morning, for example, I was on my way to my brother’s office lost in thought and having a “conversation” with him in my head. I often rehearse in my mind what I am going to say, and what I anticipate him to say, etc., when I noticed that something was missing at the top of the stairs at the station. Not only was I at the wrong end of the platform from my usual transfer, I was at the wrong station. Somehow my body just drifted off the train, my legs moved independently from the frontal lobe activities, and I was standing at the wrong place, at the wrong time as if unbeknownst to me I had been transported by aliens from one dimension to another.

My eccentricities go even further than this: it was raining this afternoon when I got to Dotour, a cheaper Japanese version of Starbucks, where I usually pick up my “coffee flavoured cake” in a semi-recycled cup. The polite Japanese placed a grey, plastic bucket just on the inside of the door – a perfect place to put my wet umbrella. Wrong…. On my way out of the shop I noticed for the first time that the umbrella stand was on the other side of the vessel that contained my umbrella. What the hell did I put my brolly in then? It turned out that my precious umbrella was sitting in a rubbish bin along with someone’s old receipt and a few snotty tissues.

Typical….

It is at moments like these when I have to put the breaks on my untamed mind. I know that by living in my head I am far from living in the moment: the here and now. The place where real people live: the place where real people are reading the morning papers; the place where real people are twitching their nose ready to sneeze; the place where real mothers struggle up the station stairs with one small child in one hand, and a bag of shopping in the other; the place where real homeless people rummage through the rubbish bins looking for half left over sandwiches; the real place where real things – good and bad – happen. This place is the real source of my inspiration, my excitement, my happiness, my pain, my sorrow, and my snotty, runny nose on cold mornings.

Not my ruddy head.

Going back to blind cycling: what the hell is that? People who are visually impaired have really sharp senses, because they are missing one of the most relied upon sensory organ by humans to give them information about the outside world: sight. As a way for me to come back into the real world (apart from meditating), and to heighten my sense of being in the “here and now” I take my bicycle down a stretch of familiar side street and cycle with my eyes closed: Blind Cycling”.

Blind cycling not only tests your faith and ability to remember the road EXACTLY the way it is, but also it makes you very aware of all the small changes going on around you. The slight bump on the road, perhaps caused by an unexpected pebble, a pedestrian turning into the street, your exact position on the street based on the changes in the air speed as you pass the space between the side garden of one house to the edge of the garage door on the next. Sound, smell, and balance working together with the picture you have captured in your head.

You should try it once; it’s quite scary, but liberating.

Trusting one’s ability to live fully in the here and now is hard for someone who is naturally inclined to live in a world of abstract connections , but I think it’s all worth it, for I would never be able to gather the pieces of the puzzle to make up the painting in my head.

It’s blind cycling on days like this that brings me back to where I belong: here and now.