Improvement | - Part 2

Two recent comments/commentaries struck a deep chord with me.

The first was in an email from Tony at TrackersBay, a local group devoted to primitive survival skills.

Tony’s email had a very salient point. To provide my own interpretation of his message, his point was that we’re only truly part of an environment that we actually take part in.

Most of us take a very limited part in our local environment (aside from leaving waste in it). As Tony points out in his email, even if we’re very active in our environment, and taking part in community supported agriculture, or growing our own “victory gardens,” we’re still not participating in the environment-at-large.

For those of us in cities, the type and extent of participation we can get is limited. However, that doesn’t reduce its importance. Many of us can still get into contact with our local environment with a little effort. Find a local tracker organization in your area, or a local hiking and hunting group, and go on a few trecks. Start making dandelion wine, hunting for mushrooms, and fishing in your local streams (provided they aren’t polluted) for food.

The second message came to me from Erwan Le Corre’s most recent blog post. Erwan asks the question – “Fit for what?”

That is, what is it we’re getting fit for? Erwan says that we should be getting fit “to be strong, healthy, happy and free,” and that our ultimate goal should be to “explore our inner nature.”

I couldn’t agree more. So many of the messages we receive from the world of fitness are related to fitness as “fitting” a certain image, or expectation, of being “fit” to perform (what? our desk-jobs?), or of being “free” from fear of death from all of the dangers out in the world.

No messages of joy, exuberance, or the exploration of the miracle that is our own unique life as part of the Whole (well…there are a couple I can think of, but none that are “popular”).

Go read Erwan’s blog. Hook up with an Exuberant Animal trainer. Play with kids at the playground and forget about rules. Read Eckhart Tolle’s book “The Power of Now.” Explore your world and yourself, through movement, through communication with the world around you.

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This isn’t a joke! You are going to die…someday.

I hope that it isn’t soon, and that it isn’t painful. But nevertheless, it will happen someday. That’s how life works.

What strikes me as strange is the obsessiveness with which we often approach our prejudices toward certain things. Specifically, for this blog, I’ll discuss this with relation to fitness – but it’s true of anything.

People in the fitness world have all sorts of “rules” that you’re supposed to follow. Eat this, don’t eat that. Exercise this much, but no more, and no less. Do this ten times a day. Do that once a month. Eat these pills once after every other meal on Wednesdays.

You’re supposed to “activate your core” and build [insert bodypart here] “of steel.” You should only drink non-flouridated water from a holy stream that trickles from the top of Everest for one month every Spring.

You need to “challenge your proprioception and balance.” You need to do “multiplanar exercise” and get into your “heart rate zone.”

And you do! You race around, doing all this stuff. You eat organic, you drink the Yogic water, you practice your Asana’s, you give your Pilates instructor a cash gift every Christmas.

Then you die.

And not only do you die, but you probably die roughly around the same age as everyone else in your generation. Maybe you live ten year longer than your fast-food-abusing classmates. And maybe not.

Maybe you live a couple of years less than the person who ate moderately well, and exercised moderately, all those years. And maybe not.

My point is this – there’s little credence to most of the bullshit we try to sell ourselves and each other every day.

Will fast food kill you? Yes, in excess. In excess anything will kill you. Unhappiness is a killer if sustained for too long. Too much sunlight (plus other environmental stressors…like sunscreen) will give you cancer. Too little, also, can kill you.

You are going to die. The most important thing is that, while you’re alive, you get the most out of it, and help others to do the same (so that they, in turn, will help you, etc.). Do things you love to do. Do things that make you really effing happy. I mean – EXUBERANT. DO THEM NOW! And help others to do the same.

And forget about all those bullshit “rules.” You know what’s good for you. Do it.

Tag Archives: improvement

Live Free, as an Integral Part of Your World

You are going to die