https://meanderingpassage.com//wp-content/uploads/images/2023/12/ebm-20231119165554.jpg
When I was much younger, I rode dirt motorcycles and even did some racing, mostly Motocross and Cross Country. Often on Sundays, if there weren’t a race, a few friends and I would load up our motorcycles and spend the better part of a day riding rough, unkept trails in the Brushy Mountains in northwestern North Carolina. The Brushy Mountains are an isolated “spur” of the much larger Blue Ridge Mountains, separated from them by the Yadkin River valley running southwest to the northeast, across five counties in North Carolina: Caldwell, Alexander, Wilkes, Iredell, and Yadkin.
One lesson I eventually learned, often the hard way, was to focus my vision ahead to where I wanted my motorcycle to go and not focus on where I didn’t want to venture. It was often difficult to do this on a narrow path with deep ruts and gullies, large, loose, bolder-like rocks, or steep forest dropoffs. Fear or uncertainty often drew my eyes away from my best and sometimes only available path. Part of this “wisdom” was not looking too far ahead. Of course, you have to be generally aware of what’s in the distance, but with one bobble, and there are always bobbles, that distant path may change. You’re pulled to what you focus on.
It wasn’t an easy lesson to learn and required many needless falls and instances of physically manhandling my motorcycle before I became proficient at it. But when I did, those rides became more fun, and my speed riding became significantly faster.
We have a multitude of distractions in our daily lives these days, and I often think of this bit of practical riding focus wisdom. It applies to more than just motorcycle riding; sometimes, I still practice it in my brighter moments.
Well written and love the metaphor you have chosen. I was journaling today about the distractions I allow to interfere in my days. And, as I practice each day on letting go of those distractions sooner I become more proficient at it, in my brighter moments. The worst riders are the ones who are watching my riding rather than theirs. Gotta keep my focus…
Thanks, Monte. It’s easy to let ourselves become distracted by things that are “not helpful” to our lives or mental state, and there are more than ever of them these days. I’d gotten pretty good at focusing when riding, but I don’t practice that method in my daily life as much as I should, except for those brighter moments. 😜
It is an interesting metaphor – particularly because I also encountered it in my younger days – just not with motorcycles. I was involved in martial arts and occasionally we would have the stereotypical breaking boards. The lesson there was not to see the board, but focus on a point on the other side of it, and move through it. An amazingly similar philosophy I think. Both end up teaching the same thing.
Yes, it’s the same basic principle, Mark. I think it probably widely applies and has been experienced by most in efforts to become good at something. I never broke a bone during my motorcycle days, but there were some close calls. Of course, I was trying to go around or over obstacles. It would be hard not to see a board in martial arts that I was trying to go through. Haha
Yeah, similarly I would have a hard time not thinking about falling off that motorcycle! :-) Great lessons in both I guess. You see an obstacle, you know it might hurt going through it, but looking past it is the best way to get to the other side.
Agreed! Have a great day, Mark.