Where you look , bike riding and the art of Zen.

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It was a church-bell Sunday morning and I was teaching my 4-yr. old to ride his bike. Or should I say ‘convincing’ him? For as soon as I let him go he was riding. Could do it all along . Yet I knew instinctively that as soon as I told him I was no longer holding on, he would look down and fall off. All too soon we ran out of track and he found me out. Woops! Then the learning /convincing process began in earnest. About half an hour later he had suspended disbelief in himself and was riding without stabilizers.
Tired by the continuous chasing and tracking and picking up and dusting down I looked for somewhere to sit. We were in the local park and we had it pretty much to ourselves, it being an unfashionably early hour for a Sunday. Just ourselves, the ‘No Cycling’ signs and one other person in the whole place. The centerpiece of the park was a small bandstand as is often the case in seaside towns such as ours. It was surrounded by a generous expanse of level concrete whose circular perimeter was punctuated at regular intervals by solid park benches. I took the nearest one to me and settled in behind my newspaper while Alex mastered his new skill around the plaza.
The only other visitor was ensconced in another bench about 90 degrees around the perimeter and 30 meters away from me. She was a middle-aged, matronly type and she had her head buried in a large book on her knee. Even at a distance she gave the impression of someone who didn’t want to be disturbed.
We had been there for about 5 minutes . Alex’s confidence was growing quickly and so was mine. I’d stopped watching him like a mother hen and , for his own part, he’d stopped expecting me to. I don’t know what made me look up but the same sense of foreboding had apparently affected the book-reading matron. Alex was passing me and headed her way. Directly her way – at least as directly as the wobbling allowed. And even though he still had a long way to go before he would reach her, both the woman and I could apparently sense calamity. Alex seemed drawn to her as if by an invisible tractor beam. We both watched, disbelieving, as he homed in on her fragile-looking legs. The accident simply took forever to happen. But happen it did. By the time he’d run this poor woman down , my smiling toddler had all but brought the bike to a halt. Nevertheless it was a painful impact no doubt. But pain was not the main expression etched on the open-mouthed features of my young son’s victim. It was outrage. I don’t remember her saying anything at all amidst my profuse apologies and enquiries as to her well-being. But her face was screaming
“ I don’t believe this – 10 acres of open space to himself and he runs into me ! What kind of vandal are you raising here? “
I had no explanation. Shortly afterwards I fled the scene with as much dignity as I could muster and took Alex home wher he could show off to his mother and his friends. But on reflection I now believe I know what happened that day. And subsequent experience reinforces that belief. Alex ran into the woman because she wasn’t looking at him. He believed she should have been. After all, he was doing something amazing. But it wasn’t spite or anything deliberate that brought him careering into her hapless shins. It was simply the fact that an inexperienced traveler was looking at her. Looking to see if she was looking yet. And what I shall call the ‘law of looking’. Which simply states.
‘Where you look is where you shall go’
It is true of many things in life.
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