Freedom
/There is a tremendous sense of freedom traveling by motorcycle. Each day I start out with an idea of a route. I have a sense of where I’m going and what the opportunities are, but I have no firm destination or time of arrival. It’s a simple formula. I’m using a route and some key waypoints to create an interesting ride. I’m finding that deviating from the route and exploring is the norm rather than the exception. I stop when the bike needs fuel, stop when I need to eat, and stop when I’m tired. Otherwise, I’m kinetic, the bikes in motion and I just want to keep going. Traveling in the moment by motorcycle is a kind of freedom, a freedom to explore, to seek new destinations, and new experiences.
As I’m having all these great feelings of freedom on the road, it’s serendipitous that I’d be passing through Montgomery and Selma Alabama on Day 2 of my journey. It turned my attention to the history of the civil rights movement and how hard people fought for basic freedoms and universal rights. Seeing the monuments and landmarks of the civil rights movement, as well as riding over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma served to underline the importance of freedom, both from an historical context and today. Voting rights marchers were confronted by police in 1965 in Selma in an event that came to be known as Bloody Sunday.
It’s difficult to be sanguine about freedom and equality in America today. Historically, the trajectory of progress, civil rights, and equality for all is positive. There is improvement and progress, but the disparity as I ride the small towns and backroads from Alabama through Mississippi is staggering! There are towns, houses, and apartment complexes that are dilapidated. It’s a picture of neglect and of people forgotten. It’s like time stood still in some places. How can anyone be hopeful in this environment? And yet, I ride past the kids getting off the school buses, living in a place that time forgot, and they seem happy to be kids. What waits for them? What is their future?
As I ride through Alabama and Mississippi, it’s clear that the civil rights movement and the fight for freedom was and is a dream, and still remains a dream for many because of the economic plight, but also possibly because of a lack of our collective imagination. Hopelessness for some.
Freedom is a state of mind. It’s about how you view each day with hope, open to the possibilities of change and choice. Freedom to work to change your circumstances to something more positive. That’s a big part of why I’m doing this trip. Freedom to defy convention, to follow a dream, to breakout of what’s expected, and to breakthrough to something new.
It’s not just that these are poor places with a lack of resources. It’s not that people simply are choosing to live a simpler life. Riding through forgotten towns with lost industries coupled with the fact that they’re under siege by fast-food restaurants and the Dollar General stores every couple of mile, suggests that there’s something in our culture, in the American way, that traps the people and places in a sort of stasis of despair. Would you rather be a poor person in South America or in the USA? At least in South America poor people have access to better food.
I’m outsider looking in when I ride through. I suspect families are happy, people are laughing, loving, and content in these places. Empathizing with these communities, a wave of sadness washes over me thinking about what it must be like for them. I have to believe there are so many untapped opportunities and dreams that are simply not realized.
