Revisiting Proust on a Night Bike Ride

Photo taken at the Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica.

I haven't been myself lately. For one, I've had the whole water submerged, The Graduate listlessness of coming home from one life and not knowing how to find the next. Secondly, I'm preparing to move to a foreign country where I'll be completely on my own and speaking a language I can't quite grasp. And in all of these attempts to make plans and steps, I'm worried about a family illness that will be much more difficult to help out with when I'm across the ocean. Needless to say, I've been a bit off.

And in the football crazed, concrete, Baptist haven of Tomball, Texas, I haven't found much to confide these discomforts in. Thus, I decide to take a night bike ride. It's colder out now--the sticky heat of a Texan summer is beginning to pass, and I actually felt chills on my skin. Rather than the makeshift headlight I've created out of a headlamp on my bicycle, I rode in darkness. In the beginning of the ride, the stars were barely visible in the clouds.

I started thinking about living in France. And of all the things to think about, I started imagining all the good places I'd find for reading classic literature since I'll actually have free time. I thought about how I'll experience a different climate--how I'll see the trees change color and learn new names for the life around me.

I stopped after about 20 minutes to drink water, and I noticed the clouds were beginning to fade. And I realized I was cold--which was a relief; the heat seems to drive everyone mad. Then I noticed just how dark everything was. I had almost forgotten what darkness was--where everything bleeds together into one shadow and is somehow unrecognizable.

I guess we forget the brilliance of light or recognize the madness of heat until we are overwhelmed in darkness and or reminded of the cold. And in my anxieties of this summer, I started to learn more about the meaning of one of my favorite quotes from literature: Le bonheur est salutaire pour le corps, mais c'est le chagrin qui développe les forces de l'esprit. Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind (Marcel Proust, Le Tempts Retrouvé, The Past Recaptured). All of this anxiety I feel is completely human, and my ability to confront, face and live with it will only allow me to see more of the beauty in my life.

If you're reading this and have something on your mind, I hope you'll find yourself on a night bike ride. Maybe a walk. A swim in a creek or river. Something that forces you to be alone outside in light or darkness, silence or sound.