The Best is Yet to Come

We all dream of doing great things, don’t we?

That's why I tried to bike from Portland to San Francisco early last month. 

I’ve since realized that I'm somewhat of a hopeless romantic. With my last extended break of dental school, I dreamed of biking through the celestial Redwood forests, gazing upon breathtaking sights off the Pacific coast, and singing cries of victory at the Golden Gate Bridge. I envisioned the endless hours on my bike to bring about marvelous feelings of freedom and life-changing revelations. I couldn’t shake this longing to metaphorically find the place where all beauty came from. And so I packed up my bike with a tent, sleeping bag, food, clothes, and set off on the journey.

As it turned out, I didn’t make it. I’ll never forget that horrendous first day of cycling. In contrast to my romantic vision, I found myself being that random dude biking down a highway as logging trucks stormed past me with deafening roars. Every slight incline on the route tortured my quads as I strained to push my overloaded bike onward. When the sun began to set, I started looking for places to camp for the night, but unbeknownst to me, campgrounds were still closed for winter. I ended up pitching my tent off a quiet forest road, and collapsed into a cold, wet sleep. After a week and a half more of cold, wet, lonely days and nights, and with the coronavirus situation rapidly developing, it became both physically and intellectually clear to me that I should return home. Shortly after crossing the border into California, not even halfway to San Francisco, I rented a car and drove home. 

Sitting at home now, day after endless day over the past several weeks, it’s been interesting to reflect on what motivated me to go on my adventure. Wanderlust is a familiar feeling — that wonderful excitement when I first start planning my next adventure. That longing to encounter new, life-giving experiences. Those feelings always feel bigger than life. And indeed, despite its comical miseries, this trip was even so filled with awe and moments of overpowering beauty. One of the most surreal experiences was feeling like I was the only person in Redwood National Park as I walked among the towering giants, listening to their silence in a spell of wonder.

Yet, after this trip, as with all of my travels, there’s always a small part of me that remains unsatisfied. A small part of me realizes that the reality of my experiences only barely scraped the full extent of that initial, ethereal wanderlust. Perhaps that’s why I continue to travel and chase the wonder. My desire to bike away and find beauty in a forlorn land feels strikingly similar to my current quarantined restlessness. As I shelter-in-place, I dream of the day I can embrace my friends once more, go to the grocery store without fear, and travel freely. As much as I dream of these wonderful things, I also somewhat ashamedly know that once everything returns to normal, it won’t be long before dissatisfaction creeps back into my inner thoughts. Soon enough, I'll be taking my friends for granted once more, somehow always finding another complaint with the “normal” I had been dying for. I’d like to think I’m not ungrateful, but there’s a deeper truth to this discrepancy between my feelings and their fruition.

“The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” — CS Lewis, Mere Christianity God has given us a taste of His goodness in this world: in the beauty of nature, the embrace of a loved one. But nobody stops walking when they’ve only just begun to see the light at the end of a tunnel. Everything I long for in this world, from fantastical adventures to peace and no more suffering, can only be perfectly fulfilled in the next. Deeply buried underneath our earthly longings is the desire to fully know God. During my bike ride, I read through “The Cloud of Unknowing”, a 14th century text written by an anonymous monk in his contemplative prayers to direct his soul’s "naked intent unto God". The writer describes how seeking the mysteries of God feels like abiding in a silent darkness, in a cloud of unknowing. Yet, if we truly believe that in His presence is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore, we must relentlessly press upon that cloud in meek stirrings of love. In so doing, we acknowledge the present darkness but walk ever closer toward the light.

"Therefore, she hung up her love and her longing desire in this cloud of unknowing and taught her to love a thing the which she might not see clearly in this life, by light of understanding in her reason, nor yet verily feel in sweetness of love in her affection."

— The Cloud of Unknowing

And so, as I stay home and await this pandemic’s end, I remind myself: the best is yet to come. Pedaling through the pain was possible because I believed in the beauty at my journey's end. I will find the place all beauty came from when I see God face-to-face. Though we groan for our redemption, we can trust that by His mercy each moment of this life draws us nearer to Him. Though we cannot understand this life's sufferings, we continue to hope, and direct our dreams to their eternal perfection.

“As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake with thy likeness.” Psalm 17:15