I spent the next day much the same as I had spent the day before, meandering from place to place, allowing myself to disappear into the streets. I sat on benches and watched people hurrying past, keeping their heads down, not allowing themselves to be distracted from whatever task they were involved in. Their faces were blank to me. I tried to imagine that each of them was a living person; that behind each face was a mind, with thoughts and feelings, beliefs and dreams, foibles and complexes. It was no good though. As hard as I tried, they remained slabs of meat, robots who did whatever they did because they knew nothing else. I wondered how many of them were happy, how many of them were doing what they wanted to do. After a few hours of directionless wandering, I found myself standing outside a church. There was something reassuringly solid about it, this monstrous slab of ancient grey stone. How long it had been there, I had no idea. A long time, anyway. The notion that there were some things that could survive longer than a lifetime was oddly comforting. Something told me that I should go in and pray. It seemed to do the trick for plenty of other people, so maybe it could help me figure out what was going on. Beyond a vague notion that you were supposed to kneel down and place your palms together, I had no idea what you were supposed to do. Was there an accepted format for speaking to God? Were there some special words He would listen to, a certain sign you had to give? I found a pew and gingerly placed my knees on the cassock or the hassock or whatever the little cushion thing’s called, trying to dispel the thoughts of how ridiculous I felt. I closed my eyes and wondered what was supposed to happen next. Apart from a wedding and a couple of funerals, I hadn’t set foot inside a church since the age of about nine, when my brother and I finally succeeded in getting my parents to give up on the barbaric practice of dragging us away from our presents on Christmas morning. The hush of the place intimidated me, and I half expected somebody to come and throw me out for not being a proper Christian. There was probably something I was doing wrong, something that would mark me down as unbeliever. Any moment a hand would clamp itself down on my shoulder, and I would turn round to see a priest with bushy eyebrows standing there looking stern. I asked for a sign, because I had a suspicion that was what people did when they prayed. Nothing happened, but I stayed where I was. I grew impatient, and my mind begin to wander. Had I turned my phone off before coming in? The sun was beginning to set. On its way down, it pierced the stained-glass windows, casting a beautiful kaleidoscopic glow on the opposite walls. Maybe this was the sign. Maybe God was trying to tell me something. Maybe I was being soft. If only this was a Catholic church, I could go in and confess, and make everything okay. Confess what, though? I didn’t know what I’d done.
This is the beauty of cycling - the rhythm puts serious activity in the brain to sleep: it creates a void. Random thoughts enter that void - the chorus from a song, a verse of poetry, a detail in the countryside, a joke, the answer to something that vexed me long ago.
It's All About the Bike: The Pursuit of Happiness On Two Wheels