Intellect can only go so far. You can reason with people. You can provide statistics. You can generate elaborate proofs. But in the end, most people believe what they want to believe because that’s the way they feel.
Many cycling bloggers, including me, spend a lot of time trying to prove to non-cyclists that bicycles belong on the road and that most cyclists do not violate the traffic laws with impunity or ride recklessly. Still, these myths persists.
Non-cyclists claim to see cyclists doing these things “all the time,” even though I and other cyclists see many cyclists who obey the law. I even shot and posted a video to this effect to make my point. By doing so, I may have convinced a small number of people of the falsity of their perceptions, but I doubt I reached a large audience.
Then, when I wasn’t trying to convince anyone of anything, something strange happened. The other day, I sat down at my computer to write a post for my blog. This, in and of itself, wasn’t unusual.
As my regular readers know, I keep to a schedule when updating my blog. And, it was Thursday, one of the days I ordinarily post something.
What made this particular day unusual was that I had been ill and hadn’t gotten around to writing a post. In fact, I had been awake, and unable to sleep, for nearly twenty-four hours when I sat down to write.
I knew exactly what I wanted to say because I had been thinking about the topic for several days. But, in my illness produced semi-stupor, typing was a challenge.
The cyclist in me was determined to finish the post on time. Among other things, cycling has taught me discipline. Riding in adverse conditions has trained me to persevere, even when my body is feeling the strain of foul weather or difficult riding conditions. So, I pressed on.
I wanted to talk about the tragic death of the visiting MIT scientist Kanako Miura. She was killed recently in Kenmore Square when a truck hit her bicyle.
At the time of her death, many local cyclists expressed sympathy and were disheartened by the loss of another cyclist. It’s always sad to hear about a cyclist getting killed, but this cyclist was a brilliant scientist and visitor to our country, from Japan. As such, she and her family deserved sympathy and compassion. Yet, that is not what they got.
When her death was reported, all the anti-cyclists came out of the woodwork to initiate the cyclist blame game. They didn’t care who she was or about the truth of what had actually happened, they just wanted to blame and attack all cyclists, including the one who had just been killed.
With this in mind, I sat in front of my computer and started typing. I was too tired to worry about how I was expressing what was on my mind. I just typed exactly what was in my mind as I was thinking it. In a sense, I wasn’t writing, I was just recording what I was thinking at that moment.
Several times, I had to get up and walk around to wake myself up. I use this method as a natural stimulant when I have to finish something and I don’t want to resort to caffeine.
I really don’t know where my motivation to finish that post came from. Our site, Bostonbiker.org, is hosted on an unreliable server. As a result, my blog had been up and down the previous week, causing an unusual drop in my traffic. It wasn’t easy to convince myself to finish writing when I didn’t know how many people would be able to access my blog.
Despite my feeling that no one other than my regular readers would read it, I decided to finish the post anyway. The main reason was that I felt what was on my mind had to be said.
Relief set in when I had typed the last word. But, at that point, I felt as if I couldn’t stay awake for even one more minute. I was too tired to even proofread what I had written, as I normally do. I just posted it as I had written it, straight off the top of my head, and went to sleep.
It was early morning when I collapsed into bed. Due to illness, I had decided to take the day off and slept most of the day.
Upon awakening, I scrambled to complete a few essential tasks. Then, I decided to check my blog to see if it had been up or down that day. I was taken by complete surprise by what I saw.
Hundreds of visitors had descended upon my blog to read the post about Kanako Miura. Most of the hits were from around the U.S, with a few hits from other countries as well. Upon further investigation, I noticed an unusual number of visits from social networking sites; there were 37 shares of this post on Facebook alone. Clearly this trend had started, and had gained strength, by word of mouth.
I didn’t know who the visitors were, but I was hoping that many of them were non-cyclists. Maybe having this information shared with them by their friends would drive the message home. I started to think about why this particular post had resonated with so many people. What made it different from other posts I’ve written about cyclists who’ve been killed by motor vehicles?
I’ll probably never know for sure. Still, when I reread it, I noticed that it had been written, not from the head, but from the heart. Perhaps this was the key to cutting through people’s fixed beliefs. Maybe we’ve been going about it in an unproductive way, with facts and figures, and rational justifications, when we might have done better by practicing cycling advocacy from the heart.
