In War and Peace, Tolstoy reflects at length on the deterministic nature of history and the misguided conceit of great leaders, especially Napoleon, who flatter themselves with the idea that they are the ones making things happen. At one point, he likens Bonaparte to a child inside a carriage pulling on leather strings who imagines he is the one guiding the horses galloping outside.
Sometimes, it’s sorta like that with the Thursday night ride, too. You think you have a say in where things are headed, but then you realize that the group is moving with a will of its own that is not really any one person’s volition, but rather, the sum total of desires, preferences, biases, inclinations, and momentary urges of everyone involved.
The dominoes are somehow set up and fall according to natural laws that are themselves no doubt an expression of some deeper underlying principles and so on and so forth, turtles all the way down.
And that’s when, if you ask me, things are most satisfying because it means that all those best-laid plans, like how fun it would be to spy one another across an artificial channel from beneath a weeping willow, simply become data to be observed in how the next destination is arrived at.
Because clearly, no one would really choose to cross among the trees merely to end up on more water across the way, even if it meant absolving oneself for having passed up an opportunity to float one’s back in the water earlier in the evening.
A glowing quarter moon had no choice but to illuminate the celestial sphere with its soft milky glow, but surely, that didn’t detract from its beauty one whit; on the contrary, its inevitability—and our acceptance of that—is what makes its loveliness so poignant.
Somehow, things keep happening, beyond and outside of our control: you’re there and back again, no choice but the choices that can’t not be made.