My brother and motorcycles: no more.

Motorcycle. Motor cycle. Cycle.

I met with him last weekend and he said, “Thank goodness I lost the passion for motorcycles.”

“I’m no longer addicted to it.”

“Can you imagine being into motorcycling like a teenager at this age I am now?”, he asked me. He is 47.

I didn’t say anything back, so he continued, “And it was just like that. One day I woke up, did my things of the day without even remembering bikes existed. It simply vanished from my life.”

We all think we can control how big cycles operate in our lives. In reality, each one of us have a story or two about people making explicit how they had experienced closings of big important cycles they though would be forever.

Divorce may happen.

Being let go by a long term job without any warnings.

Kids leaving home for good. Some, just like that, in the morning, as they get out of bed.

My brother never expected to lose interest for bikes. I can feel that as a bicycle rider myself. This may sound a bit creepy, but a lot of cyclists think they will ride until they die, preferably, on the bike.

Lance Armstrong wrote in his book It’s Not About the Bike that he would like to die at a hundred years old while racing, with the American flag on his back and the star of Texas on his helmet, after a final, triumphant descent on a bicycle, probably in contrast to the depressing days he had spent at hospitals fighting a spreading terminal cancer.

Lance closed the cycle with cancer, then with the Tour, then with professional cycling, then with his brand Livestrong, then with Nike and so many other supporting brands after his public confession about doping.

Eduardo Fleury, the faculty coordinator of the local university I taught classes for some years, was an extraordinary guitar player. He and his band used to tour across Latin America presenting classical pieces of J.S. Bach on the guitar. Magnificent. Until one day he woke up and it happened. He never touched his guitar ever again.

These uncontrolled cycles are our fate. We cannot escape them. We must accept them the same way we do everyday in the morning when we open our eyes just to witness the greatest inevitability of all: the Sun is rising for the day. Just another day, another cycle, like it or not.