Text: "Sharing is caring, and caring is love"

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WHO INVENTED THE BIKE?
On Tuesday morning I went to meet up with some peeps for breakfast at 8am. One of the guys had brought his bike all the way from Melbourne - by plane - to Sydney, as a trial to see if he could get around alright.
He said he normally felt quite lost when in a different city without his bike. The bike is like an extension to his body he said. Something to do with the pedalling and the movement of cycling i.e. the knee to ankle to toes rotation on the pedal, that was different to the usual bi-ped style of getting around.
I said very bravely "I know where the bike was invented. It was in a German city. I met someone who came from the city, and he said that his city was famous for being the place where the bike comes from". But when I couldn't remember the exact city name, we moved to discuss the reliability of that claim - how could any one person claim to have invented the bike?
Which got me thinking - blast, why can't I remember the place and the German guy's name who told me.
When I got back to the office, I began investigating and came across the following enlightening information, which neatly highlights how we are what we share and how the idea of "Creative Commons" (the modern ability to use other people's digital media how you like, as long as they've given you the license to create by re-mixing their work to make a new work) isn't completely new.
Here's the deal. A man called Karl Drais, from Karlsruhe in southwestern Germany is credited as the Grandfather figure of the "running machine" - the ancestor of the bike if you will.
According to Risemberg (2009), his "hobby horse" didn't have any pedals, and it was just a frame with a seat and two wheels and one would move along by kicking the ground with one's feet.
From there, the bike was developed still more but it was eventually Frenchman, Pierre Lallement who legally fought for the right to say he had invented the bike. Then still later, they added chains to the bike but it was finally Hans Renold of Renold Chain Company fame who in 1880 "invented the bush roller chain, ancestor of all modern drive chains".
"In 1885 he patented the block chain, a tougher variation, and then did something that would be unheard of in our modern world outside of the open-source software realm: to quote the company history (Renold is still in existence today), Hans "decided to openly give his idea to the cycle trade for all to freely manufacture. Undoubtedly he gained many friends by this charitable action," writes Risemberg (2009).
It's interesting to see how one man's drive to get around a tad faster than walking eventually became the bike in the last 200 years or so. So in this sense, with this example of collaborative invention that's part of our way of life now, we are what we share.

BUT DO WE HAVE TO SHARE?
To a certain extent we have to share as well because there's infinite knowledge out there and unless we share what we have and what we already know, we can't make progress within reason, or learn new things from others.
(That's probably why travelling is such an exciting thing as one is always having new knowledge about the places he visits as well as himself being unravelled and revealed to himself).
Getting back to the topic, when you have a culture that freely gives or shares, you have a culture that's grows. Growing breathes new life into old concepts.
When we give freely gives (shares) we come to new understanding or new knowledge when we give our ideas away to our listeners, but our listeners respond and give feedback - which when it surprises us, makes us happy.
Often the info is new to us and we really appreciate it, because we've got more understanding, more wisdom.
By sharing what we have, new life can be breathed into tired concepts through brainstorming.
Sometimes, when you reach a road block in your own limited/stressed/over-worked head space and imagination, its a relief when you can clarify your own thoughts by sharing your thoughts and problems with others.

SHARING IS CARING AND CARING IS LOVE...
But just to consider a little more why it's true in a certain sense that we are what we share, and through sharing freely we can experience love, I'm going to share a story from high school.
Over five years ago, a mate of mine, George used to say that "sharing is caring and caring is love" and we all used to laugh when all he wanted was to borrow a pen to copy notes from the board. And he'd say "hey, did you know that sharing is caring and caring is love?" It then became an in-joke among my year and a line that's been stuck with glue in the scrap book of high school memories.
If love is both giving and receiving (an act that can happen in an instant!) then its true also to say that sharing - to give that someone may receive - is caring and caring is love. If we shared more though, would there also be more love?
Or is it that we are fuller beings, beings with love, when we are people who share, since "sharing is caring and caring is love".

SPECIAL THANKS.
PS: Thanks Katie for sharing the image. Sharing is caring, and caring is love.