Drawing insights into human traits from wondering at the Cycle.

During my morning walks, I see an old man every day with a florescent raincoat on top slightly hunching riding a classic cycle and delivering the newspapers to the houses along the way.

We don’t understand each other’s language but we communicate and acknowledge our presence without words. A few days back his cycle caught my attention and I started to wonder.

I started to interact with the cycle as if I am looking at it for the first time.

First I saw the wheels. I had it in the mind that it is for rotation. What if I had never seen the wheel and I don’t have any reference to it. I could feel my eyes bulging out with amazement looking at this beautiful piece of machinery.

Questions started to pop up in my head. How did the idea of the cycle come up?

Before as I know through history there were horses or cattle like camels or bulls for transportation involving a minimum of 4 legged support.

What was it to ride a horse for the first time or to tame it? What would have been the approach? The human trait to tame an animal captivates me. This would go on to another post. I will focus on the cycle here.

From my childhood days as I remember I was in awe of seeing people riding a cycle and started to learn on my own. The challenge I had was I didn’t know how to take off and land. I barely could touch the ground seated on the cycle.

I used to take the help of people around to take off and would slow down and trip to land. Once I took off it was easy as I was relying on the momentum of the movement of the cycle. I remember crashing into walls, kids, trees to land. Until one day a friend showed me how I can keep one leg on the support of the pedal and bring my other leg to the other side and land softly. That was revolutionary for me. Now I didn’t have to rely on anyone and cover more distances.

Once we get the momentum it is easier to control. Getting there and letting go of the momentum to land is the hard part. We can draw parallels to many aspects of our lives to this.

One can explain through the laws of physics why the momentum helps us ease the ride. This holds good with any moving objects cars, planes, horses, trains, satellites, etc.

My wonder takes me to the questions.

How will I interact with a bicycle for the first time without having any knowledge or any memory of someone riding it? What would I see? How did the person come up with an idea of the cycle before even riding it?

What was about the cycle which made it happen? Is it the wheel? But the wheel has been for a long time.

Is it the imagination?

Imagining two-wheelers as a possibility, seeing a possibility to move faster by harnessing energy from the legs and the body without having to rely on animals or fuel.

If I hadn’t seen anyone ride it I wouldn’t have imagined how I would have learned it for the first time. Somehow when I see other people doing it looks easy and feels natural.

That’s also why we see a rise in the number of athletes breaking the records as soon as someone breaks the distance-time record for the first time. Somehow the possibility gets imprinted into us and feels natural.

Every action I take looks interconnected and not independent of people, nature, planet, or universe.

It is the power of humans to make all of this possible through imagination. Imagination manifesting into creation. I feel creation and destruction are the opposite sides of the same coin. We mostly imagine and create to save ourselves as an individual or as a race.

Do we see how important is nature to us? But do we see it beyond us and beyond reasons for it to exist? Can we see the ecosystem of nature and animals beyond our needs? It makes me wonder.

Finally, It boils down to me.

What are the things I am trying now which were never possible? How does the imagination, action trickle down to fellow humans, nature, animals, and the entire ecosystem?

It is in me what I do with this insight.

During this time of the pandemic, what are the actions we take now would be natural in the future?

I wonder.

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I am fascinated by the core traits and behaviours of us as humans which drives us despite the zillion forms and creations we take. We resonate with these traits across the world beyond the cultures, colors, languages. It is to see where we as a race evolve to.

I would like to create a play around this and express this through movement, science, sound, and visuals. Putting it out to the universe to manifest. If you resonate let’s explore.