The things we do shape who we become, especially the small habits we engage with regularly. Riding a bike and being a part of cycling culture is no different - it can be a catalyst of transformation for us for good or un-good.
The gap between who we want to be and who we actually are can feel like an impossible chasm to traverse.
Somedays we have a tailwind that drives us into blessing those around us. Other seasons we are the cross-winds tearing up someone else’s identity.
So what can we do?
We are always being formed into someone’s image
Our avocation of riding bikes instills certain habits of thought, action, and relationship, intentionally and unintentionally formed and lived out in our person. Life as a cyclist generally revolves around how to make changes to be better in one area of life: riding a bicycle. The transformations undertaken are often incremental in nature and limited to improving the function of our bodies on a bicycle, or focused on the function of our bicycles.
The patterns of life we choose change us towards a certain vision of the good life, often a life lived by professional full-time athletes, paid influencers, and those around us who we look up to as having the ideal performance, bike, body, or lifestyle. We focus on fitness and performance, often to the detriment of larger, more important aspects of our lives off the bike, including our spiritual, physical, mental, and relational health.
We can choose to be formed into the image of someone else
Instead of following the default modes of our social context as cyclists and endurance athletes, we practice thoughtful counter-cultural practices that reframe riding bikes as a platform of forming us into genuinely better persons who connect more deeply with God, ourselves, others, and the world.
Whose image am I striving after becoming? Who am I becoming?
As followers of Jesus we seek to become more like him. “How would Jesus ride a bike, if he were me?” is a question worth meditating on.
Footnotes