The Width of Life

As I contemplate the end of this grand adventure (we only have one more week on the bikes!), I see us continuing it in other forms despite life’s drudgery. I will be slogging away at work. I will be studying and staring at spreadsheets. Stirling and I will have (hopefully!!!) countless days and nights together with ample opportunity to get comfortable. Too comfortable.

I’ve always believed that I love adventure. To embark on a 2,100 mile bike tour across eight different countries, I suppose one has to. And to see marriage as an opportunity for spiritual adventure and mutual growth also points to my zest for newness.

The poet Diane Ackerman describes this feeling well, “I do not want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.”

I want to continue experimenting, adventuring, trying new things and challenging my habits of mind and body. Once again Venice’s Biennale provides inspiration with this goal.

“The Exhibition will focus on the work of artists who challenge existing habits of thought and open up our readings of objects and images, gestures and situations,” writes Ralph Rugoff, curator of the 58th International Art Exhibition, “Art of this kind grows out of a practice of entertaining multiple perspectives: of holding in mind seemingly contradictory and incompatible notions, and juggling diverse ways of making sense of the world.”

This holding and juggling is what I aim to keep alive even when we’re off our bikes and back home in “normal” life. Help me help myself to keep things interesting, dear readers, will you!?