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For the first time in I-don't-even-know-how long, I mounted my bicycle yesterday.

I mounted it with the intention of avoiding the immediate, exiting the present. And it worked.

In fact, I rode right into my past.

I rode down the street I walked along to elementary school and around the field. I saw the place where I stared at the clouds, the place where I got beat up, the place where I sat alone, and even the place where I got hit across with face with an accelerating tether-ball. There were children playing with their mother there.

I rode past where I took piano lessons until my teacher moved to England to support her husband's efforts to get his degree in theology. There was a new family there.

Then I rode past the place where I stood and watched fireworks on more than one occasion. There were joggers jogging there.

I felt like a child, inserted into years that I had long ago put behind me. I felt uncertain on a bicycle that I had long ago stored away. Every turn was a lesson in trusting my own coordination and its primitive memory.

I pedaled and pedaled. I pushed and pushed. I pushed past my limit, and I pushed past the barrier that keeps me from true nostalgia. I ended up right next to the church in which I had my piano recitals. Right where there is a perfect view of the sea. There were people there.

That's when it struck me: No matter where I go, someone else has already been there. No matter how much I pedal, or how hard I push. People play on the playground, people move into houses, people run along sidewalks, people gossip in the courtyard. I was in all these places once, and now they are there. And there were others there before I was.

And it isn't comforting, but the truth is this: As unique as it feels when I have an identity crisis, someone else has had the same problem. And someone else will after me. As solitary as it feels fighting for a cause and losing, someone else has lost a similar fight. And someone else will after me. As alone as we feel experiencing anything in particular, someone else has probably been there. And others will most likely follow.

Almost renders "you wouldn't understand" invalid.

Now, somebody slap me for making that way more philosophical than it needed to be.