Purpose and Distraction

Distraction.  Our lives teem with it.  It oozes out of every crack and crevice, threatening to slip us up and devour our time.  Tweets, Facebook posts, Snapchats, Instagrams and a myriad of other disturbances I am too old, too uncool, too out of the loop to even be aware of at this point.  These trifles all have one thread in common, they are big on instant gratification, emotion, flash and noise, but very limited in meaning.  Just because things come at us quickly and in an apparent grand fashion, should not imply they are worth our time.

On the surface, a motorcycle can certainly appear to be one of these.  Shiny, loud, fast, appealing to the visceral.  Riding one also, a mere twist of the wrist supplies enough thrust to make your sphincter clench and stretch your arms, instant gratification indeed.

But it is the machine's deeper ability to help us find things we didn't even know where there, that separates it from the other time drains.  Some realize this through travelling on two wheels, seeing what they have not seen from the best view on the road, others through the trials of competition and yet others through wrenching, repairing and creating in the metal that is motorcycles.  And those in the know, know that it is not distraction.  It is not hobby.

It is purpose.