Everything Fades Away

There are things I used to be devoted to that I simply don’t care about anymore. Not because I made a principled decision to quit them. Not because I was scared off them. They just faded, the way a color fades in a window that gets the afternoon sun. One day I noticed the color was gone, and that was that.

Two of those things had wheels.

Motorcycles

I loved motorcycles. Really loved them. In my late teens, while I was in the Navy, I was in an accident that should have killed me — a life-threatening one, the kind people don’t walk away from. I did walk away, eventually, but it cost me. It affected my health for decades after.

And here’s the thing: I still loved them. The accident didn’t turn me off motorcycles. I didn’t come out of the hospital swearing them off. For a long time they still meant something to me — the speed, the noise, the particular way a bike makes you feel like you’re riding the road instead of just traveling down it.

Then, slowly, they didn’t. It wasn’t the danger. I want to be clear about that. It wasn’t some late-arriving fear, wasn’t the accident finally catching up with me in my head. It was apathy. I just stopped wanting to be bothered with them. The interest drained out on its own and left nothing behind — no regret, no bitterness, no drama. Just an empty seat where the passion used to sit.

Car Racing

I used to watch car racing. Really watch it, the way fans do — knowing the drivers, caring about the standings, making room in my week for it.

Then Greg Moore died. I saw it happen. I nearly vomited watching it. The incident shook me in a way I didn’t fully process at the time. I didn’t stop watching racing because of it, not consciously, not as some vow. I just… stopped. And I didn’t notice I’d stopped.

Recently it occurred to me that I hadn’t watched anything racing-related in over thirty years. Thirty years, and I hadn’t once missed it. That’s a quiet kind of leaving. So I bought an F1 subscription, figuring maybe the love was just dormant and a few races would wake it up.

I watched a few things. And sitting there watching, I realized the truth: I just didn’t care. Not shocked, not saddened, not nostalgic. The thing I used to love was on the screen and I felt nothing. The subscription was money spent to confirm what thirty years of silence had already told me.

The shape of it

What strikes me about both of these is what they’re not. They’re not cautionary tales. They’re not stories about fear winning, or trauma winning, or wisdom arriving. They’re stories about apathy — about caring less until one day you notice you don’t care at all, and you’re fine with it.

Maybe that’s just what happens to some passions. They don’t end in a fire. They end in a long, slow cooling, and by the time you put your hand on them they’re room temperature and you wonder why you ever thought they were hot.