Freedom
John Berger • 2002
A One of the things about riding bikes B has not really to do with speed C. It’s that... it’s a very intense experience, both psychic and physical, of freedom.
But it is very necessary to say what I mean by that. It isn’t actually getting to the traffic lights at the top and being the first off, I mean there is that... E
But the real freedom is something different.
It is that when riding a bike you make a decision, you observe, F you observe, G you observe everything all of the time.
And then you make a decision. And the consequences of that decision come, almost immediately. And at the same time you have very little protection– physical protection, against them.
So that between decision and consequence, and they are not absolutely instantaneous, but they are *like that*. I
You decide something, and it happens, for good or bad. Where as in the rest of life, inevitably, time is more delayed, or there are many many more constricting considerations or factors, there is more friction if you wish, between decision and consequence.
And that is in a very lived sense, something which to me seems to touch, not necessarily the essence, but something very deep about what I mean by freedom.
And then to bring it back, that same freedom, has nothing to do with power or speed, and has to do with almost its opposite. It is the free choice in someway, by gesture, glance, or action, of tenderness K.
