Zvone – Inner Dialogue

What Should I Listen To – My Mind or My Body? The Comfortable Wisdom of Home Before I left for a month-long bicycle trip through the Mexican deserts, I spent quite a lot of time thinking about what would happen when my mind and body eventually started resisting the journey. Not in some dramatic movie-hero way, but practically. What do you actually do when your body says it’s tired and your mind starts producing convincing arguments for why stopping would be the smartest thing imaginable? At home, the answer is simple enough. If I feel exhausted, I sit down. If I feel drained, I make coffee and stare out the window like the main character in one of those slow European films where nothing happens for seven minutes except rain sliding down the glass. If everything hurts, I tell myself that the body needs rest and that should be respected. It sounds healthy and reasonable. Fatigue settles into the legs, the back, the shoulders. The body becomes heavy, almost too heavy to carry from one...

The Rain Was Never the Problem Expectations, Responsibility, and the Strange Freedom of Letting Reality Exist I was standing beneath a small tree somewhere in Mexico, watching dark rain clouds move slowly across the mountains. A few kilometers earlier it had started with light drizzle — the kind of rain cyclists optimistically ignore because admitting reality too early feels emotionally unnecessary. Then the rain became heavier. The branches above me began leaking larger and larger drops, and my confidence in the tree slowly disappeared together with any illusion that this situation would magically improve within the next thirty seconds. The nearest town was still around ten kilometers away. In practical terms, there were only two possibilities. Either I stayed there indefinitely like some damp roadside philosopher, or I continued riding and accepted that both I and most of my equipment would soon resemble abandoned laundry. I turned toward the mountains and started cursing the we...

When Nature Drives Away Loneliness The Strange Fatigue of Modern Life I sit at home in front of the computer, trying to escape boredom. For the last few weeks I’ve been carrying around a strange kind of fatigue. Maybe I’m getting sick. Maybe it’s just spring exhaustion. Or maybe my body is protesting against a lifestyle in which a human being spends more time sitting than the average decorative houseplant. The cause is probably not that important. My days pass between writing, editing photographs, and revisiting memories from my cycling journey through Mexico. At the moment, the computer gives me more satisfaction than work, socializing, or even going outside. Which is slightly ironic, considering that not long ago I spent weeks riding a bicycle through deserts, mountains, and remote dirt roads with almost no preparation whatsoever. And when I eventually grow tired of the screen, something else appears. Not exactly loneliness. That word feels too dramatic. It is more like emptines...

Why the Sofa Always Wins — Until One Day It Doesn’t It looks slightly absurd, but it is not. A person can spend months dreaming about travel, freedom, adventure, movement, mountains, distant landscapes, sleeping under the stars, cycling through unknown places — and still feel completely incapable of leaving the sofa on a rainy afternoon. Not because they are lazy. That explanation is too simple and honestly unfair. What usually stops people is something much quieter and more intelligent: the imagination of effort. Before any difficult but meaningful experience, the brain begins producing small warnings. Very practical warnings. Responsible warnings. Adult warnings. It reminds you how exhausting airports are. How uncomfortable heat feels. How difficult climbing hills can be. How unpleasant poor sleep becomes after a certain age. How nice it is to have a proper shower, reliable coffee, and a chair that doesn’t slowly destroy your spine. And the worst part is that the brain is n...