Santa’s Magical Bicycle and the Freedom of No Choice

One year, on Christmas morning, I ran from my bed to the tree and found a new bicycle. It was gleaming cobalt, big and curvy, with tassels on the handlebars and a big white ‘S’ on the matching blue pleather seat. With stars in my eyes, I gasped in wonder and joy. “Wow!” Santa even signed it!” I exclaimed, tracing the letter ‘S’ lovingly with my finger. “Or maybe he put this here because my last name is Simpson?” Grown-up truth be told, it was a Schwinn, but no matter; I thought it was the most beautiful, magical bicycle I’d ever seen.

I haven’t thought of that bike in years. This week, though, in somewhat dreary Bagenalstown, Ireland, not far from the train tracks or the disused canal, I was that same starry-eyed child as a delivery truck pulled up outside our cottage door. Five new cycles emerged from the trailer. 

Mine is splendiferous. It sparkles pearlescent white like the inside of a seashell. (Shall I name her Misty like the famous wild pony of Chincoteague?) And she fits me perfectly. She rides a hundred more times smoothly than the rentals we tried out in Laos, Taiwan, Russia, or Uzbekistan. With the imprint of those penny rentals on my mind and my seat, I secretly hadn’t been so sure that this cycle travel in Ireland was going to be much fun. 

The arrival of this bicycle changed my whole perspective!

You’d think we spent hours sifting through options to find the perfect bike, but it wasn’t so. Oh, we tried! Before traveling, we sat a myriad of cycles to get an idea of size, studied internet guides, measured inseams, and tried to pre-order something six weeks in advance. The Irish gent on the other end of the line just laughed. “Ah lad, there’s a worldwide bicycle shortage due to Covid, don’t ya know? But let me see if I have something for you.”

He had precisely one something for each of us.

Choice is funny. We know in the grand scheme of things that not having choice is scary and bad. The sound of it is like the heavy metallic clang of imprisonment. No education, and you won’t have options. Borders and businesses closed to Covid, and you can’t choose where you’d like to go. Oppressive government or close-minded society, and you can’t freely choose to live how you want to live.

And yet, it is hard to picture being happier with my bicycle even if I had been able to choose every specification. Think about when you go to a restaurant and choose amongst a wealth of options for what you’d like to eat. If you are like me, you often end up eyeing what is on everyone else’s plate and thinking they selected more sagely. 

Or how about the grocery aisle in which you debate which of the twenty brands of chopped tomatoes or fluoride toothpaste you should buy? It’s maddening! Riddled with the possibility that you are going to make an inferior choice.

Three of my family members graduated this spring.

They are faced with big life choices. And I’m certainly not suggesting letting someone else or serendipity choose your next career move in the way that the nice gent in the bike shop chose my beautiful white bicycle. I do want to say, though, that you can choose to be happy with whatever path you take, even if sometimes that path does more of the choosing than you.

As I cruise along this afternoon, I’m on a path that was once the main river route from Dublin to the southern port towns. It’s sometimes flanked by hoards of wild stinging nettles, and it is going to hurt tonight trying to flush all the grass pollen out of my sinuses, but WOW, is it ever beautiful and wondrous to be riding free in this world. The new cygnets [that is a baby swan, in case, like my husband, you don’t know anything useful] swimming alongside their parents, whose white curving necks nod to their reflection, are just another family out enjoying the sunshine. I am grateful to be here. Thank you, Ireland, for letting us in, and thank you to Santa’s little helpers at the Waterford bicycle shop for your work of magic too.

Wishing you all the power to choose without burden.