Conflicted.

This showed up just now in my Instagram feed.

 

I am immediately conflicted. 

I love a great group ride. I’ve enjoyed my fair share over the years. A few of them have been purposeful, like this one is. Most have been in celebration of the bicycle and some have had no overarching theme at all.

After my experience last week at Bike Happy Hour — an intensely internal one, admittedly — I wonder now where I can participate in bicycle community activities without feeling weird. I wonder if I am supposed to feel weird at every single community even going forward, until such time as there’s and end to the current round of fighting. (And let’s be clear: any end to the current hostilities would not be, and could never be, permanent or even very long term. There is too much at stake for the power players involved, overseas and here in the US. Sorry, but that’s what happens when you grow up and see things as truly complicated and messy as they are.)

Do I somehow summon the spoons to speak up for complexity and nuance? Will be I be shouted down simply because too many people in this time and place are too impatient for nuance? Or will I be shouted down simply if I identify (or am identified) as a Jew?

Maybe there’s a way out of this, but right now I feel a little stuck. Because right now, in too many places, too many voices are confusing — or conflating, if we’re honest — Zionism and Jewishness. For too many people, those have become one and the same. People who don’t like Jews in general are dictating the terms of my identity for me. And I don’t feel big enough or strong enough to counter their arguments.

If the idea of “doing-every-single-public-thing-for-Palestine” catches on at the current rate, I may end up riding alone all summer. I’ve done that before, and I can certainly do it again. I’d just rather not.

I have three more public bicycle events to check out in the next couple of weeks, during which I hope things will become clearer for me. I will hold off my inner verdicts until then, and I guess I’ll see what happens.

Happy riding.