Drew T. Noll © 2024, all rights reserved

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Bikes, Blood, and the Boss Upstairs

Shavua tov le kulam,
It appears (based on popular demand) that I have neglected the blogsite for too long...

I guess I will just have to start by filling everyone in on what I have been thinking about as of late. I have been exploring, yeah you guessed it, the meaning of the universe again. I am really getting into Derach Ha’Shem ( The Way of G-D) by the Ramchal. He was an amazing guy that lived a few hundred years ago in Italy that learned just about all there was to know by the time he was 14 and then started to learn Kabala. Did you ever want to know what happens after you die? Or why you were ever born in the first place? There are answers... The hard part is listening when you get them, like the other day:

I had just come from davening and learning the Parsha in Shul on Friday morning. I was very exited about what I had learned and decided to do a bike ride and listen to the new Matisiahu CD. You know, it is really weird, I was singing along to it in my sleep the night before and when I woke up, it was just there, in my head. So, I got my bike and Ipod out, raced out of the house and through the gate that leads to the trails next to my house and then up the hill. When I got to the top, I noticed that my hand felt weird and sticky. I looked down at it and it was all covered with blood! Oy... I had shredded my finger going through the jury-rigged gate so; I turned around and went home to wash it off. After tending it with a band aid, I raced back out on my bike and realized I forgot my gloves so I turned around and went back again. I was now very anxious to ride and got my gloves and raced, once more, down the hill to the gate where the trails begin except on the way there, I zoomed down a little ravine, that I have navigated about a thousand times before, and while I was going over the rock at the bottom while ducking under the tree overhead, my front tire seemed to slide back down into the ditch and at the same time, I continued, quite suddenly, up the hill and into the dirt! Just like that I was face down, wondering what had happened. At first I was in shock at my new predicament, but then I just started laughing, blood dripping down my arm and side and everything.

You see, when I went through the gate, I realized that I was having bad thoughts about someone I won’t mention, for obvious reasons you will soon see. When I forgot my gloves, I was thinking about ME with capital letters. And last but not least, when I was riding down into the ditch, I was thinking that I was so in control; I had prayed to Hashem, I had learned Torah, and I was a really good bike rider (mouth full of dirt... sputter, sputter...). I just needed a gentle reminder that Hashem runs the world...

While I was laying there in the dirt, I had to decide to either continue on the ride, or to stop and go home with my tail between my legs. In the end I decided to continue since I seemed to have gotten the lesson, for the moment anyways. For the rest of the ride, at every technical section that I rode through, I repeated the mantra, "Hashem runs the world, Hashem runs the world,” Sometimes it is a good thing to be so totally self aware that you completely forget about yourself!

Thank you Ramchal