Choose Your Line

Why control isn’t the goal — and how motorcycling taught me to steer differently.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
— Viktor Frankl

This is the second post in a ten-part series exploring Stoic wisdom through motorcycling. If you missed the first, read Part 1: The Obstacle is the Way.

There’s a strange kind of silence that arrives before a decision. Not the dramatic, cinematic sort — just a moment when everything goes a bit still. You’re cold. The weather is turning. You’ve been stuck behind a dithering campervan on a foggy Alpine pass, visibility down to ten feet. Your visor’s streaked. Your fingers are numb. You’ve begun to suspect the promised hot chocolate at the summit is a myth.

And then it happens.

That moment where you realise you’re not just waiting. You’re choosing.

You can crawl along, cursing your life choices, or you can ease out, hug the inside of the curve, and ride through the uncertainty. Neither is perfect. But dithering? That’s not an option.

On the Road, Choice Becomes Real

This is the lesson motorcycling taught me long before I realised it was a Stoic one. You don’t get to control the fog, or the traffic, or the weather. But you do get to choose your line — how you ride through it, how you respond. And that choice? It changes everything.

Seneca once said, “If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favourable.” He wasn’t talking about roundabouts in the rain, but he might as well have been. On a bike, as in life, if you don’t choose your direction, the road chooses for you.

And let’s be honest — most people aren’t really choosing. They’re drifting. Into jobs, relationships, patterns. Into lives that feel more like a default setting than a deliberate route.

The Existential Biker Was Born in the Rain

I remember it vividly. May 2017. My first proper European tour. Cold, wet, and riddled with doubt. I wouldn’t take the bike over 50mph — which, in touring terms, is roughly the pace of a determined jogger. I was terrified of speed, cornering, stopping, everything. And to top it all off, it rained for days. Not “light English drizzle” rain. Biblical rain. Existential rain.

I was ready to quit — until one of the guides calmly explained how tyres work in the wet. How grip is built into the very design. How the thing I feared was, in many ways, imaginary.

And just like that, something shifted. Not the road. Not the bike. Just my thoughts.

I rode out of that forecourt like someone who had briefly forgotten to be afraid. And in doing so, I became something else: a rider who was choosing. Not drifting.

What Philosophy and Fog Have in Common

The Stoics had a word for this moment of inner steering: prohairesis. The ability to choose your response. It’s the quiet space between what happens and how you react. And it’s yours — even in the middle of a Swiss fogbank, behind a campervan named Destiny.

We live in a culture obsessed with control. The Stoics weren’t. They were obsessed with clarity. With presence. With aligning your actions to what you can actually influence — and letting go of the rest.

On a bike, that means the throttle, the brakes, your balance. Off the bike, it means your thoughts, your actions, your values. Everything else — the potholes, the weather, the internet — is not up to you.

Don’t Mistake Movement for Progress

Denzel Washington once said:
“Don’t confuse movement with progress. You can run in place all the time and never get anywhere.”

That hit me like a gear shift.

So many of us are “busy” — but we’re not really choosing. We’re reacting. We’re managing inboxes and moods and Mondays, but not asking: where do I want to go?

Choosing your line isn’t about speed. It’s about intention. It’s about asking, What matters here? and then moving in that direction, even if it’s foggy, slow, or uphill.

Learning When to Act and When to Wait

There’s an art to knowing when to lean in and when to stay still. It’s not passivity — it’s presence. T.E. Lawrence called it the power of the “dreamers of the day.” Those who pause long enough to listen, and then move with purpose. Sometimes courage looks like overtaking. Sometimes it looks like waiting.

And sometimes, the real ride begins not when you take off at speed — but when you realise the fog won’t last forever, and you’re still here, engine humming, ready.

The Freedom to Choose Is Everything

Frankl wrote from a place of unimaginable darkness, and yet his message was defiantly clear: even in the bleakest of circumstances, your inner freedom remains.

You don’t get to choose the terrain. But you always get to choose how you ride it.

That is what “Choose your line” really means.

Not a rally cry for blind optimism, but an invitation — to respond with clarity, to steer with intent, to remember that drifting is a choice too… just not a very good one.

So whether you’re on a bike or just navigating your morning coffee with a side of overwhelm — pause. Notice the space. That’s your line. And it’s yours to ride.

Catch up on the series:

Part 1: The Obstacle is the Way
Part 2: Choose Your Line (you’re here)

Until next time,
Louisa (The Existential Biker) – Life is Precious – don’t waste the ride.

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