An unreasonable day

The peo­ple at Land­mark have a thought-pro­vok­ing piece of advice: be unrea­son­able. While this may be relat­ed to the idea of using one’s fac­ul­ty of rea­son, it is not quite the same thing. The sug­ges­tion is that we (human beings) often get caught up in a web of rea­sons for the actions we take, and the sug­ges­tion they make essen­tial­ly means to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for voli­tion and free will—or more specif­i­cal­ly to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for our choic­es rather than lay­ing the blame on caus­es or conditions.

The exam­ple they use is a sim­ple ques­tion: choco­late or vanil­la? And once that choice is made, why that one? Folks faced with this ques­tion invari­ably say things like, «I like choco­late bet­ter» which is an excel­lent rea­son for select­ing choco­late. But the desired answer is «because it is what I choose.» There needs be no rea­son for a deci­sion, only the deci­sion itself.

Like most of Land­mark’s phi­los­o­phy, this is a repack­aged ver­sion of a Bud­dhist idea: name­ly of tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for, accept­ing, and being freed from one’s kar­ma. One need­n’t reject or ignore the «rea­sons» that may come up around a deci­sion, but it should be enough to be informed by those rea­sons, not ruled by them. In the end, it needs to suf­fice that the choice was made; hav­ing a list of rea­sons for mak­ing that choice only weak­ens one’s own abil­i­ty to choose. After all, who is it that made the choice, you or the caus­es and con­di­tions that sur­round you?

I beg you to for­give a digres­sion here. It is one of my pet peeves with the pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion show 24 that its hero Jack Bauer fre­quent­ly insists, «I did­n’t have a choice» when con­front­ed with some ques­tion­able action he took. A hero that is oth­er­wise deci­sive and bold, Jack Bauer absolves him­self of the respon­si­bil­i­ty for his actions not because the ends jus­ti­fy the means but because he did­n’t even have a choice in the mat­ter? Sor­ry, that does­n’t seem hero­ic. To say that the alter­na­tive was an unac­cept­able choice is one thing; to say that there was no choice is appalling to me. Yes, he made a choice, and it was the right one. What kind of tough action hero whines about hav­ing made the right choice?

Any­way, today is my forty-first birth­day. Last night I was faced with a choice. I had been invit­ed to a par­ty in Dil­lon Beach thrown by the mem­bers of the band Fans of Jim­my Cen­tu­ry. It’s an invi­ta­tion I was flat­tered to receive because I’m a fan of the band and have been since before it exist­ed; before FoJC the mem­bers of the band were in anoth­er band that pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned on Mono­chro­mat­ic Out­look: Simon Stinger. I was invit­ed to par­ty with the rockstars!

My head was full of rea­sons, pro and con. Dil­lon Beach is a pret­ty long way to go. I’d have to ride some of Marin Coun­ty’s back roads in the dark. I prob­a­bly would­n’t know any­one there oth­er than the two mem­bers of the band. I’d have a chance to expand my social cir­cle. It could end up being a bunch of over­ly drunk peo­ple. It could be all over by the time I get there. The more I tried cost/benefit analy­sis, the more I leaned toward not going.

And yet, I still looked for­ward to going.

I had to sim­ply make a deci­sion. So I went. I let go of «because» and went because I chose to go. I grabbed the bot­tle of absinthe which nev­er got opened dur­ing Open Stu­dios along with sug­ar cubes and the absinthe spoon to bring as a gift for the par­ty — I was­n’t going to drink it and I thought it might make a good gift.

Get­ting there was not quite as easy as I’d antic­i­pat­ed. Some­where around Nova­to rain start­ed com­ing down in a down­pour, though the roads were dry by the time I got to Petaluma. For­tu­nate­ly cold air dries clothes faster than I thought they would. It turns out that it’s even eas­i­er than I thought to take a wrong turn (or rather not take a turn that means stay­ing on the same road) in Marin coun­ty after dark. I end­ed up in Val­ley Ford and knew I’d bet­ter check the map. Even­tu­al­ly I found the road, which looked very famil­iar even in the dark. Turns out it is the road I was on the first time I set the bike down. Lets just say that my pace was quite a bit more sedate last night than the first time I encoun­tered that par­tic­u­lar curve.

When I arrived Ali­cia and Vic­tor were about as gra­cious as hosts can pos­si­bly be, intro­duc­ing me to every­one and mak­ing sure that I got some hot cider after com­ing in from the cold. It was a great group of peo­ple and I made a bunch of new friends. Serv­ing absinthe is a great way to meet peo­ple at a par­ty because the lit­tle rit­u­al involved is fun to watch, and it takes a lit­tle time so the recip­i­ent of the drink feels spe­cial. Which just goes to show that I don’t even need to drink alco­hol for it to work as a social lubricant.

As the dri­ve is long and twisty, sev­er­al peo­ple stayed the night to dri­ve home in the day­light. Break­fast was cof­fee and sausage and the view out the win­dows was pure white, just as it had been pure black at night. The fog had rolled in thick over Toma­les Bay. Ali­cia spec­u­lat­ed that it would be clear a lit­tle ways down­hill. Final­ly at some point after 11:00 am I start­ed back toward San Fran­cis­co. Since it is my birth­day, I decid­ed to take Route 1 South at least as far as Point Reyes Sta­tion, then per­haps come across Lucas Val­ley Road or take Route 1 the whole way to Mill Valley.

I had the steer­ing bear­ings replaced on the Moto Guzzi recent­ly and I haven’t been tak­ing long rides because I haven’t trust­ed the steer­ing. It’s been most­ly fine around town, but I did­n’t want to not be able to get out of a cor­ner in the twisties. The bike now han­dles beau­ti­ful­ly again, but the fog did­n’t lift before Point Reyes Sta­tion. Route 1 seemed treach­er­ous with the vis­i­bil­i­ty at points as low as 50 feet and the roads wet and in places flooded.

You know you’re going slow­ly on a motor­cy­cle when cars pass you, but today I was fine with pulling over at the turnouts and let­ting the four-wheeled men­aces pass. The com­bi­na­tion of wet roads and low vis­i­bil­i­ty was not con­ducive to a brisk pace. It’s embar­rass­ing to let a car pass, but it would be more unpleas­ant to ride home in an ambulance.

South of Point Reyes Sta­tion the fog did clear up and the roads were dry at points, and then it turned into some nice rid­ing. I still was­n’t push­ing hard, just hav­ing a nice, fun ride along the Cal­i­for­nia coast­line. Being able to see where I am going makes for a much more com­fort­able ride.

Com­ing toward the Gold­en Gate I could see San Fran­cis­co blan­ket­ed by fog — or rather I could see the fog blan­ket­ing the City. I could­n’t see the City at all until I got across the Gold­en Gate Bridge and actu­al­ly was in San Francisco.

My mail­box is only a lit­tle bit out of my way com­ing from the Bridge to home, so I stopped in there to check for mail. As it turned out I arrived right when the mail truck did. I had to wait a lit­tle while for the mail to be sort­ed, but in the mail was a birth­day card from my father with a check and a note instruct­ing me to spend it on «some­thing fun.» So rather than going straight home, I let Dad treat me to lunch at Joe’s Cable Car, which is just about the best burg­er mon­ey can buy, and a fun atmos­phere to boot. The Tony Ben­nett was play­ing just slight­ly too loud, as usu­al, and as usu­al the burg­er could not be beat. On the way out, I shook Joe’s hand and thanked him. I told him there was ketchup on my plate, but only for the fries; none touched the burg­er. He liked that.

By two o’clock I’d already had a fan­tas­tic birth­day. Add to that some qual­i­ty time with cats, cof­fee from Philz (where I tast­ed the cof­fee and real­ized that I’d for­got­ten to order with car­damom, which is my habit — the barista offered to remake it and I refused the offer. If I turn down the sur­pris­es that life offers, it would get bor­ing quick!) and sushi for din­ner with a friend, it was a day that real­ly could­n’t be beat.

How dif­fer­ent would the day have been if I’d stayed home last night? If I’d been timid and safe and lis­tened to the «rea­sons» not to ven­ture out into the cold dark night in search of a par­ty where I knew no one but the host? Or if I’d debat­ed and weighed the pros and cons until it was so late that I default­ed to a deci­sion not to go?

Well, then I would­n’t have wok­en up in a house with rock­stars. I almost cer­tain­ly would­n’t have rid­den Route 1 in Marin on my motor­cy­cle. I prob­a­bly would­n’t have got­ten the card and note from my Dad until after lunchtime, so things would have played out quite dif­fer­ent­ly. It prob­a­bly would have been a per­fect­ly good day. But this day? The day I actu­al­ly had? I would­n’t trade it for anything.