Virtue

 Gun's Quote:

"It can be pretty quick, but it can't be abrupt."

-Nick Ienatsch

Riding a motorcycle has made me more virtuous. I acknowledge that is a bold claim, one that might even sound unvirtuous to some as it might hint at arrogance or superiority. However, I have witnessed virtue grow in my life.

The first motorcycle safety videos I watched often times involved guys (yes, specifically guys... I have yet to see a female rider act this way) get furious at car drivers for cutting them off, merging into their lane, or making them brake hard because a car driver didn't see them at an intersection. Often, the rider would chase down the car driver, flip them off, bust their mirror, honk their horn or "rev bomb" to show the car driver that they screwed up.

If it wasn't a rider getting angry at a driver for making a mistake, it was a rider crashing because they panicked, slammed on the breaks, and skid out.

One of the largest struggles I have had in my mental health journey has been dealing with the unhealthy behavior of overreacting to situations. (You may recall the ANT label called "Maximization.") My family would call this "being dramatic." While that may very well appear to others to be the case, it's much more often a situation in which I allowed myself to be deeply disturbed or upset about something that wasn't worthy of such a reaction. You might also hear this expressed as "Making a mountain out of a mole hill," or being like "Chick Little." ("The Sky is Falling!") At its core, it's all overreacting.

You can't do that on a motorcycle. Physics doesn't allow it.

To break on a motorcycle, you must first "load the tire." This involves "pre-breaking," a technique by which you slowly pull on the front-break lever to apply a small breaking force to the front tire. Very small. Like 1%-5%. This shifts the weight of the bike forward, applying more surface area between the rubber of the tire and the road. This must be done BEFORE you actually need to slow down. Once you have "pre-braked," you can then apply, linearly, a great deal of force to the break and come to a stop very quickly. If, however, you panic or overreact and "jam" on the front brake, there won't be enough rubber contacting the road to generate the friction necessary to decelerate safety. Instead, the front tire will skid, lose traction, and you will surely find yourself down.

Throttle works much the same way. If you hit the gas too hard or rev up the engine and suddenly let out the clutch, you'll fishtail. (No, it's not automatically a "wheelie." Yes, there is a way to hit the throttle hard and pull of a wheelie, but those who do wheelies well will tell you that it very much requires precision and control with the throttle, otherwise you fishtail, flip the bike over or dangerously land and crash due to lack of stability and balance.)

Motorcycling is about being smooth. To break faster or to accelerate faster, you must input your controls smoothly without a sudden jerk or jam of the levers or throttle. In other words, you can't overreact. If you do, you'll lose control and crash.

Oh boy, could I tell you stories about how this applied to life in the last two months.

Perhaps it was the tree falling on my house, requiring a new roof. Perhaps it was getting the new roof and then have it leak the first time it snowed and the snow melted. Perhaps it was the credit card getting stolen or taking the dog to the vet to discover both of his ACLs ruptured due to a degenerative disorder. Perhaps it was yet another sewer back up because of another bad repair that had been done at least twice already. Perhaps it was the untimely death of a co-worker, the chip shortage impacting work or the frustration that the advice and efforts I gave to people weren't taken and I had to watch them deal with the consequences that I fervently wanted to help them avoid.

The last several months have provided substantial opportunity for me to practice applying the breaks, or the throttle, smoothly. Sometimes, I did well. Sometimes, I crashed.

The guys who busted car drivers' mirrors or gave them the bird after getting cut off gained nothing. The guys who slammed on the breaks crashed, often times getting injured. Nothing good happens by allowing rash, angry or knee-jerk reactions to dictate the choices in our lives.

When someone angers me, I have learned to cool off before addressing them. When something changes that I don't like, I've learned to take a deep breath and give myself time to think about what to do next. When something bad happens... well, I'm still working on my reactions to when something bad happens.

It's a work in a progress, a lesson learned but requiring practice. What I do know is this: Nothing good happens from overreacting. Nothing.

...and that's why it's a Gun's Quote!!