What Cycling Across Africa Taught Me About the Power of Expectations
Hi, I'm Jen Dyck-Sprout.
My refusal to believe that I needed to settle on a single career path led me to see that I’m a Pollinator🧚♀️.
Like butterflies and bees, some of us are meant to have wandering paths. Our experiments and explorations are not frivolous, they are necessary for pollination to occur.
This newsletter is a small peek into life as a pollinator. I like to write about topics like:
🗺 alternative career paths (Ikigai is a Lie)
🦋 drawing inspiration from nature (The Pollinator Manifesto)
🤸🏾♀️ how the future of work must be ✨fun✨ (Why I am No Longer Pursuing Wealth, Impact, or Success)
🌳 the creative process (The Metamorphosis of My Book), and
🐣 traveling around the world with a toddler (The Story of Our Home Invasion)
Exactly ten years years ago, I cycled out of Cairo with the Tour d’Afrique, angry at myself for being so naive as to think I could ever make it all the way to Cape Town.
Where would I go to the bathroom? What if my tent leaked in the rain? What if I got saddle sores? What if I got sick? What if I got a flat tire? What if I got lost? What if I ran out of water? Sunscreen? Food? The what ifs were endless.
I felt a palpable and pervasive terror in anticipation of what lay ahead. Which I suppose was the point; the terror was a welcome distraction from the grief I had felt ever since my young, healthy mom died (not to mention a nice break from ceaselessly asking myself what I was supposed to do with my life now that everything felt so pointless).
Deep down, I was hoping that learning to push past all these fears would somehow transform me into a young woman who didn’t actually need her mom.
And yes, cycling an average of 125km (or ~80 miles) per day, over all imaginable terrains and in all imaginable conditions, redefined suffering for me. It’s hard to imagine feeling as hungry, hot, sore, tired, bored, or terrified again.
But in the end, I don’t think it was the hardest days that were the most transformative. It’s what happened on a couple of very ordinary days that completely shifted how I move through the world, to this day.
The first of those days was one month into my four month odyssey.
At this point, in the the Ethiopian highlands, I was rather used to the challenge of cycling off-road, in extreme heat, up steep hills, and over long distances.
So when I saw the directions for the day that took us into Bahir Dar, my heart jumped with joy.
The ride promised to be an easy 60 km cruise, mostly downhill, on an entirely paved road into town. We wouldn’t even need to plan for lunch on the road that day because it was to be such a short day.
Astoundingly, I was exhausted as I rolled past the finish line.
The day felt exactly as difficult as all the days that preceded it. How could it be that 60 kilometers felt as tiring as 120?
I thought that was funny, but didn’t think much of it until a few weeks later, in Tanzania, when our finish line was unexpectedly pushed back a couple kilometers, so we would have more comfortable ground to pitch our tents on.
Two additional kilometers after cycling over 100 shouldn’t make too big of a difference right?
Wrong!
Every extra inch I had to cycle that day felt like the most excruciating of the tour. Turns out, there is nothing worse than thinking you’re done with a challenge, only to realize you are not.
It dawned on me that my experience on this tour was entirely determined by my expectations.
When I hoped for a smooth day without any setbacks, I was inevitably disappointed. But when I shifted my mindset and hoped for adventure? Guess what I got?
The time of my life.
Now, when I expect the unexpected—losing a job or another loved one, for example—my days are much more enjoyable than when I try to force things that are out of my control to unfold according to a plan that is convenient for me (though of course I still try, I’m human 😂).
I can appreciate what I have instead of wasting energy wishing for things to be different.
