UnlearningSilence.blog

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 new problem. I would fix it. It would develop another one. I would convince myself that it was not serious. The bicycle would disagree.

Today, it finally won.

I stood there looking at it and felt unexpectedly sad.

It was not an expensive bicycle. It was not particularly fast. According to my eldest son, it was not even a particularly good bicycle. It was a Dutch bike. Black, upright, with a basket at the front.

I bought it several months ago after my previous bicycle was stolen. The replacement was identical. Same bicycle. Same shop. Same colour. Same price.

When my eldest son saw it, he asked whether I had somehow found the original one. I had not. I had simply gone out and purchased its twin. At the time, this seemed entirely reasonable. In hindsight, it may have been one of the earliest clues that I have a strong preference for familiar things.

I like familiar things. I always have.

Last year, I visited Amsterdam and fell in love with its bicycles. I loved the way people moved through the city. Young people, older people, parents carrying children, people in suits, people in dresses, people doing their shopping. Everyone seemed to be cycling. There was something simple and joyful about it. I came back determined to have a Dutch bicycle of my own.

The thing is, my attachment to familiar things extends far beyond bicycles. I have been going to the same nail salon for almost seven years. I have a favourite café in my neighbourhood and, if my preferred table is free, I will almost always sit in exactly the same place. Every morning I drink the same coffee. When I go to the cinema alone after work, which I love doing from time to time, I usually go to the same cinema.

When I travel on my own, I often find myself returning to the same city.

For me, that city is Istanbul.

I know there are countless places in the world I have not yet seen, but every now and then I find myself booking another flight there. Partly because I speak the language. Partly because I know my way around. Mostly because I love it.

I love its history. Long before I became a solicitor, I studied History and International Relations, so it is impossible for me to walk through Istanbul without feeling the weight of centuries beneath my feet. Few cities have served as the capital of three great empires. Fewer still have spent more than fifteen hundred years at the centre of world events.

I love that one moment I can be standing beside a Byzantine church, the next inside an Ottoman mosque, and a few streets later drinking coffee in a modern bookshop. I particularly love the second-hand bookshops. There is a certain smell that old bookshops have, a mixture of paper, dust, time and accumulated knowledge. Every shelf feels as though it contains not just books, but the lives of the people who owned them before. I can happily lose hours wandering through them.

The people are almost always kind and welcoming. There is an ease to many everyday interactions that I find comforting. Shopkeepers chat, strangers offer help and nobody seems particularly surprised if you decide to spend an afternoon sitting with a book and a glass of tea.

Then there are the cats. They are everywhere. They wander through streets, parks, cafés, bookshops and markets with the confidence of creatures that know they belong. People leave food and water out for them. Shop owners welcome them inside. They sleep on chairs, shelves, windowsills and occasionally on merchandise that somebody is probably trying to sell. Nobody seems particularly concerned. The cats have clearly reached an agreement with the city many years ago and everyone else simply respects the arrangement.

The last time I visited, I even found myself in a cat museum, a sentence I never expected to write. It was wonderfully strange and strangely wonderful at the same time. Perhaps that is another reason I keep returning. Istanbul is a city that somehow manages to carry centuries of history without becoming trapped by it. It feels ancient and alive at the same time. A place where empires, cultures, religions, languages, books, ferries, lawyers, students, street vendors and remarkably self-assured cats all somehow coexist.

Give me a table overlooking the Bosphorus, a glass of Turkish tea and my laptop, and I am perfectly content. While tourists rush between landmarks, I often find myself sitting there for hours, working, writing, reading and watching the ferries move between Europe and Asia. There is something strangely comforting about a city that has spent thousands of years connecting worlds. Perhaps that is why I keep returning.

The familiar is comforting. There is nothing wrong with that. In a world that changes constantly, there is something reassuring about finding places, routines and objects that feel like home.

My bicycle became one of those things.

I rode it when I was happy and I rode it when I was sad. I rode it to the station on my way to work. At the end of the day, after hours spent solving problems, reading documents and answering emails, it would still be there waiting for me exactly where I had left it. I would unlock it, sit on the saddle and immediately feel lighter. The ride home belonged to me.

The funny thing is that the bicycle was never particularly reliable. The chain came off regularly. Sometimes I fixed it myself. Sometimes one of my sons rescued me.

More than once I found myself standing in the middle of the road wearing a dress, heels and a fresh manicure while trying to wrestle a greasy chain back into place. It must have been quite a sight. There I was, looking as though I should have been walking into a meeting, while instead I was crouched next to a bicycle with black chain oil all over my hands.

My son repeatedly suggested that I buy a different one. A better one. A more reliable one. I always resisted.

I liked this bicycle. I knew this bicycle. I understood its problems. I knew exactly what would go wrong and how to fix it. There is a certain comfort in knowing exactly what you are dealing with.

Today, while my son was trying to repair yet another problem, something finally gave way. This time it was not a loose chain. This time it was not something that could be fixed. The bicycle was finished.

As I stood there looking at it, I realised that I had spent months defending it for the same reason I had kept riding it. Not because it was reliable. Not because it was the best option available. Not because it made my life easier. Because it was familiar.

That realisation stayed with me for the rest of the day.

Familiarity is not a bad thing. Many of the best things in life are familiar. The people who know us well. The places that feel like home. The routines that bring us comfort. The café table waiting for us on a quiet morning. The city we return to because it has become part of us. The bicycle that carries us home after a difficult day.

But familiarity cannot be the only thing we use to decide what belongs in our lives.

Sometimes we keep things because we know them. Sometimes we stay because we understand the problems. Sometimes we tolerate unreliability because we have become experts at managing it. We convince ourselves that because we know how to deal with a problem, it is no longer a problem. It is a surprisingly easy mistake to make.

There is a difference between something being familiar and something being good for us. There is a difference between loyalty and reluctance to let go. There is a difference between comfort and growth.

Standing beside my broken bicycle, I realised that perhaps I had been asking the wrong question. The question was never whether I loved it. The question was whether love and familiarity were enough reasons to keep it.

That thought stayed with me longer than I expected.

It made me wonder how many opportunities I might have missed simply because I preferred what I already knew. How many cafés I never entered because I already had a favourite. How many journeys I never took because I already had a destination I loved. How many possibilities I ignored because familiarity felt safer.

Life is not asking us to choose between familiarity and adventure. It is asking us not to mistake familiarity for a reason to stay.

I will probably still visit the same café. I will almost certainly return to Istanbul. I will continue drinking the same coffee tomorrow morning.

But perhaps the next bicycle does not have to be exactly the same.

Perhaps some things deserve to earn their place in our lives through reliability rather than familiarity.