Uncommon response

On a recent motorcycle ride I stopped to replenish the bike and I.  I ducked into the restroom where a professional traveler, a truck driver, wore his standard issue headset with boom mic and Harley-Davidson t-shirt.  

‘How fast that thing go?’ he quizzed, clearly connecting my riding gear with the bike out front.  

'Speedometer says 140, but I’ve never come close,’ I offered, very uncomfortable with any conversation near a urinal. 

‘Yep.  Mine’ll do that.’ 

Neat? Congratulations?  Can I have your autograph? I’m never quite sure what to say when invited into a game of comparison. 

So I washed my hands (twice) and stood outside eating beef jerky as cars and their drivers refueled.  

A foreign car pulled into the spot next to me.  ‘Where you headed?’ the car’s driver asked?  

‘West’ seemed adequate.  ‘All the way west’ felt adventurous.  

‘Good for you, man.  I ride.  I mean I used to ride.  I have a bike, but you know, the wife and the kids and the job…I mean, I want to ride. I’d love to ride like that.’

‘You should.’

‘Yeah man.  Maybe I will.  Someday’

The uncommon invites a response.  Standing in a gas station on a Monday morning, dressed in full protective gear prompted a number of looks, some commentary I’m sure and two questions.  As we observe the world around us, our brains look for patterns and my attire didn’t fit the Monday morning, gas-station routine pattern for some.  Our brains also look for safety, which can take the form of ‘people like me’ (e.g., drivers getting gas or fellow motorcycle riders). To many, I’m sure I seemed a threat because I didn’t fit their pattern.  To the truck driver, ‘people like me’ evidently meant ‘people that ride fast’ and his question was a likely some attempt at ‘how like me is he?’  To my parking spot pal, ‘people like me’ meant ‘people like I used to be’ or ‘people like I want to be.’  

The responses I received at mile marker 254 also came from the stories of these men.  One, quite sure of himself, wanted to measure up, or more likely, measure me down.  The import, by contrast, no longer sure of himself, quizzed me looking to resurrect some part of himself long forgotten. 

We seek patterns to our story and the uncommon can prompt in us an invitation to respond.  

This is why travel is so educational — we physically put ourselves in an uncommon (to us) space.  

This is why reading views we disagree with is so important — we intentionally seek out perspective so that we can learn. 

This is why learning new things is to helpful - uncommon patterns create new pathways in our brain, regenerating the brain in the process.