My bicycle broke today.
To be fair, it did not come as a complete surprise. The bicycle and I had been having the same argument for months. It would develop a problem. I would fix it. It would develop another one. I would decide that it was nothing serious. The bicycle would disagree.
Today, it finally won.
I stood looking at it and felt unexpectedly sad. It was not expensive, particularly fast or, according to people who understand bicycles better than I do, particularly good. It was a black Dutch bicycle with an upright frame and a basket at the front. I had bought it after my previous bicycle was stolen, and the replacement was almost identical. Same style. Same colour. Same shop. At the time, buying its twin seemed entirely reasonable. In hindsight, it may have been evidence of something I have long known about myself: I am deeply attached to familiar things.
I like returning to places I already love. I have a favourite café and a favourite table within it. I drink the same coffee every morning and tend to choose the same cinema when I want to watch a film alone. There is a city I have visited repeatedly despite knowing that the world contains countless places I have never seen. I return because I know its streets and the rhythm of its days. I know where to find old bookshops that smell of paper, dust and time, and where to sit for hours with tea and something to read. Its cats occupy chairs, shelves and windowsills with the confidence of creatures whose right to the city has long been settled. Nothing about returning feels unadventurous to me. Some places grow richer through repetition.
My affection for Dutch bicycles began in another city, where they seemed less like sporting equipment and more like an ordinary extension of life. Everyone rode them. Young people, older people, parents, workers, people carrying shopping, people dressed for dinner. Cycling looked practical but also strangely joyful. I returned home determined to have a Dutch bicycle of my own, preferably one that allowed me to sit upright and pretend I was travelling beside a canal even when I plainly was not.
The bicycle became part of the structure of my days. I rode it when I was happy and when I was sad. I rode it to the station and found it waiting for me at the end of long days, exactly where I had left it, unless someone had stolen it, which unfortunately explains why there were two identical bicycles. The ride home belonged entirely to me. After hours of answering questions and solving other people’s problems, I would unlock it, sit on the saddle and feel my mind begin to clear.
It was never especially reliable. The chain came off with impressive regularity. Sometimes I fixed it myself. Sometimes I accepted assistance from someone less emotionally invested in proving that the bicycle and I were perfectly capable of managing without intervention. More than once, I found myself beside the road wearing a dress, heels and a fresh manicure while wrestling a greasy chain back into place. There I was, dressed as though I should be walking confidently into somewhere important, crouched beside an uncooperative bicycle with black oil across my hands.
I was repeatedly advised to replace it with something better. I always resisted. I liked this bicycle. I knew this bicycle. I understood its weaknesses and had become rather skilled at managing them. There is comfort in knowing what will go wrong, even when something is always going wrong.
Today, another problem appeared and this time the repair was not simple. As I stood beside the bicycle, I realised that I had defended it for months for the same reason I had continued riding it. Not because it was reliable, not because it made my life easier and certainly not because it was the best bicycle available. I kept it because it was familiar.
That realisation was mildly irritating. I would have preferred a mechanical failure without an accompanying lesson about my character.
Familiarity is not a bad thing. Many of the best parts of life are familiar: the people who know us well, the places in which we no longer need directions, the table we choose without thinking and the ordinary rituals that make a day feel like our own. Familiarity can be a form of belonging. It gives the mind somewhere to rest in a world that changes constantly.
But familiarity cannot be the only test of what deserves to remain. Sometimes we keep something because we understand its problems. We become so practised at managing unreliability that our skill begins to resemble evidence that the arrangement works. Because we know how to put the chain back on, we stop asking why it keeps falling off. Because a problem is predictable, we mistake it for something acceptable.
There is a difference between knowing something and being well served by it. There is a difference between loyalty and reluctance to let go. Familiarity can make an unsuitable thing feel precious simply because we have invested so much time in learning how to live with it.
Standing beside my bicycle, I wondered whether I had been asking the wrong question. The question was not whether I loved it. I did, in the particular and slightly ridiculous way one can love an inanimate object that has caused repeated inconvenience. The question was whether love and familiarity were enough to justify keeping it.
Apparently, even a bicycle can force one into an unwanted moment of self examination.
I will continue returning to places I love. Tomorrow morning, I will probably drink the same coffee. There is no virtue in abandoning everything familiar merely to prove that I can. A life made entirely of novelty would be exhausting, and I have no intention of surrendering my favourite table to personal growth.
But the next bicycle does not have to be identical.
Perhaps some things should earn their place in our lives not only by being familiar, but by carrying us forward without requiring us to put the chain back on every few miles.
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