Living Bellisimo - A Cycle through Italia

This, the third of my cycling adventures, is a trip to discover an ethic. While America was about finding identity and the Alps a journey into the metaphysical the Italian Adventure is about trying to work out how to live my life. How to live a beautiful life. How to live – Bellisimo.

I am at a point where I really am going to have to figure this out. I am 33. I am not going to have liberty forever. Soon I am going to have accept an existence in the world of careers and children and marriages and nice houses, and that's fine, I know one day that this will happen and that's okay. Its a nice way to live.

But who am I to be as a part of it? Have I become all I wanted to be and if so, how do I know I have? I thought I was all I wanted to be at twenty and I am certainly not the same as I was then. Can I still change and do I want to?

At the outset of this adventure the answer to the latter of these questions is a nonchalant 'no.' I am hopelessly secure. I have a safe unchallenging job, I have relative social acceptance, I am fit and healthy, I have siblings considerably more unstable than I am and I have a recently failed relationship with a beautiful girl. Nothing is out of my control. I have a pretty decent status in society. Life is not great but its okay and that is a very easy place to be.

So what’s the problem?

I sit on the plane and I am not scared. I might be sick – I don’t care. I might panic – I don’t care. I might never come home – I don’t care. My bike might be fucked – I don’t care. The plane might crash – I don’t care. I might die – I don’t care. This is me. This is what can happen. There is nothing I can do about it. Nothing will change.

Its a problem. Or is it?

Maybe I am just at the point where I have finally grown up, where nothing scares me any more? We grow by overcoming fears, by doing things that we think we can't do, but there must reach a point where that's it. We don’t want to add anything else or be scared anymore.

'I'll stick thanks very much. No more surprises, please.'

Instead of adding to your own life you can pass on that combination of experiences to another. Then they can get over their fears and become someone better than you. You're all you are going to be. Someone loves you and you have reached where you want to be. Life's pretty sweet.

Or maybe it isn't?

Here my problem. I had this and then I lost it. I am at a different place and I don’t know what to do. I am in a garden about 500 yards from the San Siro in Milan and have no idea of where I want to go next.

Je ne sais pas

Je ne sais pas

There are about twenty French girls drinking beside me. They are young, probably gap year teenagers. They don't care about any of this because they think it will all work out.

Maybe I could talk to them and feel the same?'

'Ahhh, Tequila. Tres bon!'

They have no idea.

They cannot help me.

I would be regressing and that never gives you the answer. You can't ignore the past, whatever you do.

Maybe I could get drunk and forget and find some cute girl to fuck. I don’t care after all. What does it matter to me?

I don’t want to do that. I tried that before – nihilism – and that is not the answer.

I've tried it.

I've tried that.

I've tried it all.

Is that all there is?

Okay, its the first night of the trip. I'm here to let answers come to me, not try and figure it all out beforehand. Learn from Italy, the people and the land, and then see what happens.