A Pinoy Biker’s Philippine Rural Adventures

A disclaimer: this doesn’t refer to women drivers in particular, but to all drivers who ply the roads towards wherever their destinations are.

Venus conjures images of beauty, harmony and perhaps order in a world haphazard in its ways.  If I am to continue claiming that drivers are from Venus, then I have to surrender to the idea that drivers are beautiful, harmonious and orderly.  Yet we all know that this is far from the truth.  But let’s try to look at drivers in a different light.

Beauty may refer not only to physical beauty but also to inner beauty.   And as varied as we are in our personalities, we all appreciate beauty in different ways.

As a biker then, I should see drivers as beautiful creatures, not because of their physical attributes but because they somehow serve a purpose for my benefit and that of the world where we both exist.  Here I see beauty in a utilitarian way.  So drivers are there to make me feel like a superior being because while they are there polluting the environment with their toxic fumes, I am on the road doing my best to be part of the solution and not the problem.  I seek understanding and not condemnation for these words, as I am quite sure that no one will consider pollution as a beautiful thing.

Now, in beauty there is harmony.   A grotesque structure in this sense cannot be considered beautiful.  So whatever is not in harmony with the rest could be considered as the opposite of beautiful.  Yet ugliness could not be the opposite of beauty because it shares qualities with beauty: ugliness is also in the eye of the beholder.  The opposite of beauty then is something that does not posses any rhyme or reason to be, something that does not go with the confluence of other’s movements.

As any Martian biker will tell you, a true Venusian driver in his/her element will be the one who is in harmony with the environment, behaves as expected on the road, and perhaps,  one who counts bikers as a co-equal road user.  This kind of driver prefers harmony rather than discord.

In the greater scheme of things, order is what keeps us together.  Consider that as in mathematics, life is full of plusses and minuses yet it continues in its endless flow towards an unknown future.  This is because of the ordination of things as to their roles and the influences they exert on each other.  All creatures are locked together in time and place: they interact because they are there and not somewhere else.

Thus, Martian bikers and Venusian drivers are in this world together.  They have been ordained to be so from the very start when some humans rounded off the square corners of a block of rock and strapped them to a cart.  Since then, their paths have been destined to cross in an intersection of time.   However, when that event happened, it was marked by inequality.  Drivers were the overlords.  And Venus their patroness was sad.  There was disorder.

These days, numerous efforts are being undertaken to shake off this impasse.  As with their men are from Mars and women are from Venus counterparts,  bikers and drivers need to understand each other’s way of putting across their intentions, desires and needs.  Only by agreeing to be beautiful, harmonious and orderly together, though not necessarily at the same time, could both be happy on the road.