I bought a new bike. Unexpectedly, even accidentally, I decided on the spot; swiftly, decisively, but not at all thoughtfully.
   I usually take more time selecting which chocolate bar to treat myself to than I did this bike.
   The sale price was attractive, substantially reduced, in a store I don’t frequent often. I was there tending to other matters when this shiny bike caught my eye.
   A recognizable and respected brand name was boldly emblazoned on the cross bar, with a card hanging from the handlebars listing the many, many features.
   Normally, or habitually, I would mull over such a purchase, then leave the store and ponder both the merits and need over a few days. I would read up on the brand and research the model with intense interest in each detail. True consideration takes time, I believe, especially when I expect a product to last me years and years, as my other bike did.
   But not this time.
   I surprised myself.
   I bought the bike, as if it was a textbook case of impulse buying, at a time when I didn’t think I needed any sort of retail therapy. I already have enough stuff, but nothing as shiny and fancy as this new bike.
   I haven’t been cycling as much as I should over the past couple of years, although I had been before that. For many years, upon my move to Toronto, I enjoyed a proximity to bike lanes and bike trails where you can, pretty much, get anywhere. Many times, my weekends were spent exploring the city on a bike.
   It is more than transportation. You see things on a bike that you don’t even notice as you whizz by in a car. Cycling, I believe, is a more humane experience. You feel a connection to the road, hands vibrating with the rough pavement beneath the wheels, as you move at your own pace. It is a tactile experience.
   I took a tumble a few years back. It knocked me senseless, scratched up my arms and legs, smashed a decent pair of sunglasses and cracked the helmet I was wearing at the time. Genuinely feeling the pain, I even went to the hospital emergency room to have my head checked, fearing concussion (or worse).
   I was a mess.
   The incident left scrapes and scabs on my cheek, chin, and nose that proved I was up to something. They took weeks to disappear.
   The scars on my psyche have taken even longer to heal.
   It took a while for me to climb back on the bike that summer. I can’t even remember last year.
   Traffic has truly become a concerning clusterfuck these days in downtown Toronto. Bike lanes have changed, some even eliminated because of all the cranes and construction in the core area. Motorists are notoriously impatient and I’d been hearing too many times about accidents (and deaths) of cyclists.
   This is a dangerous city (in so many ways) and even the route to the safer lakeshore trails can become cluttered and confusing. You’ve got to keep your eyes wide-open. Bicycle versus automobile is not an experience I wish to experience; and there have been several close calls.
   Yet, I wasn’t even thinking about that with the shiny new bike standing before me on the store’s sales floor. All I could feel was my intoxicating need to own it. Right then.
   A new bike for me is now, and has always been, inspiring.
   From the time I learned to ride, all those decades ago, a bicycle has always meant freedom and adventure. Like a kid, I stood in the store on Sunday momentarily dreaming of the glorious trips here and there throughout the city; mindful, of course, of traffic.
   I believe the new bike will inspire me again to get back on the saddle and participate in an activity I have enjoyed my whole life. Of course, I didn’t think about all this at the time of purchase, but I have a great deal since.
   Now I can travel as swiftly as my thoughts.

© 2024 j.g. lewis

view obstructed by silence 
mind stimulated with a promise of progress
 
patience knows the pain of uncommon effort
not quite meeting expectations
 
occasionally pieces fit
more often by luck not skill
 
a pattern is not distinct
misinterpretation defies logic
 
any valid solution thwarted by
an inability to see the complete picture 
 
 

© 2024 j.g. lewis

Familiar lines on the sidewalk, in many places, have worn away.
   We see few masks haphazardly discarded along the path, and fewer still covering the faces of people we pass by. Yet, there are still occasional reminders on signs instructing us of the necessity for physical distancing, or to wash your hands and be respectful of others.
   We are in this together, a common refrain a few years back, is still a phrase you see now and then.
   How much attention do we still pay to the message?
   It was four years ago a global pandemic settled onto this continent. A state of emergency was issued in some U.S. states, across Canada, and much of North America went into total lockdown.
   Mandatory stay-at-home orders were issued. Our homes became our workplace for many of us, except those working in what were deemed essential services (and the definition of what was ‘essential’ was both questioned and expanded).
   Isolation was required. The fears spelled out in government health warnings affected us all whether we paid attention or not. Coronavirus was the initial term used in the global warnings. By the time it was identified as COVID-19, it had become even more of a deadly threat to humankind.
   Hindsight allows us now to look back on how devastating the virus was to local and global economies. We still, four years on, cannot define how much of an impact it has been on financial markets because it reverberates to this day. The term pre-pandemic is a chronological period news reports express regularly as a point of reference we still wait for business or employment numbers to return to.
   There are continual reminders of our recent societal devastation. As we walk on by the signs or lines on the sidewalk, still unsure of where we are headed, do we truly remember what we went through?
   We don’t have to think that hard to recall how we lived in survival mode, as we masked up, washed our hands raw, and limited our personal contact to small bubbles of family and friends.
   How easily can you think back on the isolation and actual trauma of it all?
The latest official numbers show total COVID-19 cases in Canada reaching 4,936,603 as of yesterday. The count currently rises about 3,000 a week as new strains of the virus are discovered or mutate. Total deaths in this country, as of March 5th, have been pegged at 58,560 which is, in actual fact, a population larger than the city I grew up in.
   Our health-care system has been crushed — organizationally and morally — under the weight of this damned virus. Governments seem to have stopped caring (I know my province of Ontario certainly has) about COVID in the same way they stopped announcing the daily death counts we lived with all those months ago.
   We live now with a more silent fear that comes alive each time I hear the wet cough of a stranger in a shopping mall on a day when I decided not to wear a mask. I keep a supply of masks on hand, but seem to forget about them until such reminders. I, like most everybody else, still have many small bottles of hand sanitizer in the car, on the desk, or at the bottom of a purse or packsack.
   Sanitizing your hands has become as normalized as getting a booster shot for the original COVID-19 vaccination. I’ve had four or five subsequent shots; it has become such a continual process in my health care regime, that the numbers are less impactful than the necessity.
   We also don’t hear the rampant public opposition to vaccines that we used to. Perhaps because the disbelievers who once protested so loudly have since succumbed to the virus. Or did they come to their senses?
   Did we?
   As a society, are we any wiser?
   I would certainly like to think so. After all, we are still in this together.

© 2024 j.g. lewis

For my entire life I have been a part of the bubble that drove this world’s growth, a 65-year reign of the post-Second World War generation, the largest cohort in the population.
   Along with my older brother and younger sister, I am from the Baby Boom that, with millions of others, became the largest generation in Canada beginning in 1958, seven years before the last boomer was even born.
   Our generation accounted for 40 per cent of the population from the mid-60s to the early 1970s.
   In addition to being responsible for the post-war housing boom and the infrastructure and urban sprawl that went with it, we have witnessed educational reform(s), ideal confrontation of our culture and counterculture, social movement, the sexual revolution, political instability, economic prosperity and rapid technological progress.
   Everything was all about us.
   Figuratively speaking, all that ended this week as Statistics Canada announced that Millennials have dethroned the population of Baby Boomers as the largest age demographic in this huge nation.
   This country, or the world, now belongs to our children and those who follow: Millennials born in the early 80s to early 2000s, and Generation X before them (1965-1980).
   What kind of world are we leaving behind? That question has been proffered many times before, but is only now sinking in with me.
   Our generation gave rise to consumerism and convenience, habits we have passed on to our children. Under our watch mass production increased; soap operas, science fiction, and automobile-dependence became cultural norms along with TV dinners, fast food, and the automation that began to impact the world economy and eat away at local jobs. Offshore production blossomed, and global trade flourished, in our lifetimes. We, for decades now, fuelled an oil crisis that will continue until we wean ourselves off fossil fuels. Our generation has raped the land of its resources and damaged our environment and atmosphere to the point where it likely will never become healthy again.
   Think of the damage we have done, and are still doing, to our planet.
   We are living longer and leaving behind a health-care system that continues to struggle as we age and die off. Yes, Baby Boomers are dying off, by natural causes or otherwise.
   Last week’s statistical evidence is the proof we didn’t need.

© 2024 j.g. lewis

Do you ever think about the things you do every day? Those things you don’t think about, you know, you just do them. Those things.

The eating, sleeping, the way you wash your face each night, the direction and path you follow when you shave, how you tie your shoes, or which leg of the pants you put on first. The method of brewing your coffee, or how you take tea, that glass of wine at just about nine, the manner in which you butter your toast. The route you drive to work, or the fashion in which you iron your shirt; there are certain things you do because you’ve always done them that way. It becomes routine.

We are all creatures of habit. The things we do, and the way we do them, are how we function; it is our way of making it through the day. Habits are the things we, unconsciously, live our lives around. What you do every day influences how you do each day.

I have many habits (we all do); some are good, and others, perhaps, not so much. Still these habits become ingrained in the psyche. These behaviours, at one time, were learned. Now they are just lived. Some of the habits even form our personality. People know us, or know how we are, because of the things we constantly and continually do.

Whether or not we realize it, we are continually picking and choosing habits as we continue on this journey called life. People we encounter, those who grow to be more than a passing occurrence, will often cause us to rethink or adapt our patterns and protocol as we adjust. A change of workplaces, or move to a new city, the loss of a family member, or distance from others will find us recalibrating our existence. Along the way we pick up, or drop, habits. Some people are habit-forming, maybe even yourself.

Habits are formed easily — many times we don’t even realize it — and can take as few as seven days to become part of our process. The longer you do them, the more they become habitual. Studies have shown it takes an average of 66 days for a practice to firmly take hold. It’s all about conditioning, the brain transforming actions and behaviors, and the sequence of movements required, into habits. In little time we undertake the tasks without even thinking.

Still we try to think, or we try to adapt habits that may make our lives easier. We look at others and try to take on what we assume to be habits that will make our lives better. Who hasn’t read and tried to adapt The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (or any of those popular self-help books) into their lifestyle at one time or another? Who is still trying?

We think more about adopting new habits this time of the year. We make resolutions to exercise more, eat less, or become bolder, or stronger. Early in this new year, we are all trying to foster new approaches, add new dimensions to our lives, or trying to rid, or escape from patterns or people that have not served us well. It’s a part of our evolution to try and change, always for the better. Ridding yourself of an old habit can be harder than adapting a new one, but still we try.

If, for no other reason, the adaptation of a new approach or undertaking is a way of adding excitement to, or breaking up the monotony of, our lives. Trying something different doesn’t necessarily mean trying something new. You might choose to write in your journal at a different time, or move your yoga class to another time of day. You might even try a new yoga style or studio. Perhaps you’ll rearrange the furniture and move the reading chair a little closer to the window. Maybe it’s eliminating that one thing from your diet that has been giving you grief.

Trying something different, and shaking things up a little, might just be the right habit to get into. It may only take seven days, but it might also last a lifetime. If nothing else, it is a way to break up your routine and, by now, we should all know the difference between a routine and a rut.

“The secret of change is to focus not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
                                                                                                                                – Socrates