A camera, computer and a compulsion.

Undeserved

I’ve been ruminating on a subject of deservedness.  It is simply, “do I deserve (am entightled to?) wallow so wonderfully in sad songs and brooding books?”

Lets be very clear, I love nothing more than joining Matt Beringer in (not) pouring my guts out and singing Slipped in the most sorrowful tones available to me.  My atonal sorrow and Matt’s baritone: bizarre.  The point isn’t my singing: it’s that I love the wallow so much.  Which I think is utterly undeserved.

I am fat, happy, a father, a husband, an employee, a sublime set of circumstances.

I had been chewing over this for a while.  And then, today, and friend and I undertook an ill-planned adventure on my bicycle.  A 36km river trail which can at be be described as two advanced trekking tracks linked by a road section and 50 switchbacks down a cliff.  Even the forestry roads near the end which may have offered relief were strewn with boot sized rocks, which, on a touring/cross bike were tiresome.

After hours of battling the trails and the object goal made, we bailed from the trails and found a road home.  33km to go, we were dog tired.  The first 9km of which was a slog up 300m.  Then… A 30kmh southerly picked up, I crested the hill and had 24km to go with a very fair wind and downhill almost the whole way.  Free miles.  Miles that didn’t cost me a thing.  Utterly free miles.  The whole time I was thinking: “I don’t deserve these free miles…  Here I am, big ring, little cog, hands on the flats, spinning out, I don’t deserve these free miles”.