Happy New Year gang! 2015 in da house and ready to roll into a new chapter of all sorts of rabid adventures. First post of the year, so is it going to be about a cool ride, the next mission or a rad piece of gear? Nope, its getting a little bit philosophical on it.

On a long haul flight recently I thumbed through the movies available and pretty quickly settled on one with Scarlett Johanssen in it, as you’d expect (love stereotyping myself). Given that it was made by the dude who did “The Fifth Element”, an excellent film, it was hard to go wrong, right?

Well, not so… The movie ‘Lucy’ had some patches of good stuff, a reasonably compelling plot line if you hadn’t seen ‘Limitless’ and of course, Scar Jo. But, unfortunately it had some relatively whack parts as well, so a mixed bag. But, there was a line delivered by the hypnotic tones of Morgan Freeman that stuck in my mind long after I had forgotten the movie (no nude scenes)… He basically said:

“And this is the crucial part of our philosophical reflection we have today: Can we therefore conclude that humans are more concerned with ‘Having’ than ‘Being’?”

Why did I find this so interesting? Well, because it sort of goes to the core of what a lot of people grapple with on a daily basis. Nod along if you know someone or are one of those people possibly grinding away in a job you think is a bit of a cunt to pay for stuff you don’t really need or want and its been going on so long, that no one seems to know why its still happening? Perhaps this cycle of having is derailing you from the adventure you really want to be on? Have we really reached a state where our priority is having stuff rather than ‘being’ or cultivating radness?

Whilst I was mulling that concept over, my good friends and affiliates at the Wall Street Journal then sent over some research to me (via a tweet) that raised an eyebrow:

x

Oh oh…

Hmmmm… So, we tend to think buying shit will be AWESOME and that having an experience will be MEH, before it all goes down, but after the event its actually massively inverse. Motherfucking fuel on my philosophical bonfire if ever I’ve seen it! Cancel that cunty trip to Ikea immediately! I know what you’re thinking at this point, its either:

  1. He’s gone weird and mad(er)
  2. What the fuck does this have to do with cycling?

1 is a work in progress and 2 is more obvious than it seems. Now that I have completed an expensive refresh of my Carbon bike line-up and purchased untold amounts of ENDURO kit, now is therefore the perfect time for a hypocritical philosophical post of course. Forget me getting on my high horse, I am about to become the motherfucking high horse!

I’m not really into New Years resolutions, as for the majority of people change doesn’t occur without either some form of fundamental realignment, or extreme external motivation. This is part of why its easy to norm into the status quo of working in low satisfaction jobs, buying stuff that we think we need but probably don’t if we were being really honest and in the mean time, clocking up a massive opportunity cost bill as either summers or adventures pass by. “Next time” or “Next year” is the thought process, then something else pops up and before we know it, the ‘Having’ has taken over.

So, whilst your’e on holiday at the moment, perhaps its the time to shake up the thinking. Tear up the list of “Stuff I need to get” and instead replace it with a list of “Places I want to go“, or “Experiences I want to have” for 2015. Don’t make it about a resolution, set that MF Goal and then get on with getting it done. Yes, experiences and travel cost money, I’m not a total hippy fuck head that’s proposing we all quit work, this is more about redirecting the focus, bandwidth and energy towards radness as opposed to things that come in boxes (on the topic of being a Hypocrite, the box that my IXS ENDURO helmet came in got stuck in the rubbish chute).

If it seems hard, just set the goal and work backwards to achieve it in 2015. It doesn’t matter if its to climb Alpe d’Huez, ride Whistler bike park, enter your first race, shred Queenstown or just going and riding somewhere new, make 2015 your year of experiences… Adventure awaits…

x

Come GET SOME

Related Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.