Cycle of Fear

Cycle of Fear:

I’ve heard people say the same thing about rock-climbing: how it shrinks
your universe to the half-inch of rock surface immediately in front of you,
this crevice, that toehold. Biking is split-second fast and rock-climbing
painstakingly slow, but both practices silence the noise of the mind and
render self-consciousness blissfully impossible. You become the anonymous
hero of that old story, Man versus the Universe. Your brain’s glad to
finally have a real job to do, instead of all that trivial busywork. You
are all action, no deliberation. You are forced, under pain of death, to
quit all that silly ideation and pay attention. It’s meditation at gunpoint.