I love my bike(s). I love riding them. I love everything to do about them.
I have a little library dedicated to my love of biking.
One book is my little Biking Bible. By Frances E. Willard. In it she says:
“The curse of life is that men will insist on holding their theories as true and imposing them on others; this gives rise to creeds, customs, constitutions, royalties, governments. Happy is he who knows that he knows nothing, or next to nothing, and holds his opinions like a bouquet of flowers in his hand, that sheds its fragrance everywhere, and which he is willing to exchange at any moment for one fairer and more sweet, instead of strapping them on like an armor of steel and thrusting with his lance those who do not accept his notions.”*
I am well aware that this excerpt only works well when and if everyone would hold their flowers in the same manner.
But it’s so simple. We all think our ways, our thoughts, are the best ways and thoughts. We find it difficult to keep that mind of ours open to the ideas and ways of others. And surely if one does not think and act like I do, then they must be wrong. Right? I never understood the concept of one way is right and all others are wrong. There’s just too many of us to believe we can all be the same. And if that was how we were suppose to be….
Wouldn’t we all have the same of everything?
If we compare our thoughts and ways to flowers, aren’t there more flowers than I can name? And for every flower there is an appreciative eye? A grateful nose to inhale that fragrance?
And your appreciation of that flower, or that thought, doesn’t bother me at all.
I acknowledge I know little of anything. It’s one of the reasons I love to read other’s flowers….thoughts. I love the learning of other’s thoughs, or the smell of their favorite flower. I love the sharing of it.
Biking is brilliant!
**Excerpt from How I Learned To Ride The Bicycle, by Frances E. Willard.
**Picture credit uncertain, I give all credit to it’s source.
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