Silence & Movement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQZOzJpaqA8
The world is filled with noise, make room for some silence. Six minutes and forty-nine seconds of an ingenious mix of brilliant sound-composition and well-captured facial emotions. This piece drove me to think.
We frighten ourselves to wake from a peaceful slumber with jarring alarm tones. We force ourselves to survive amongst individuals ready to stamp their way through in a cruel monetary society. We live in fear of the future. Muscles around your eyes tense up at the thought of tasks that burden you. Tasks those aren’t your own.
The first spout of ice cold-water bulleting your face and calmly rolling down is the first and only spiritually uplifting deed you’ve experienced all day. A moment when time stands still and you breathe. When you’re the only one alive. Your soul’s existence and you in a perplexingly large universe. A moment you know where you fit in the massive scale of things. Massive is your mind. Massive is ‘you’. YOU are the largest creation of your mind. You feel enlightened.
For two seconds.
Your phone buzzes. The teakettle screams. Your world collapses in the weight of itself. It capsizes with the loudest thud. You’re back to the symphony of the most evil construct of your head.
Your routine.
You run.
We’re all running looking for solace. But the army of millions who have craft fully suppressed nature out of civilization to create a ruckus of man-made madness overpowers your aura, your sense of connecting to something larger than your being. You have no where to hide in this gigantic puzzle created by the pawns of routine.
Life is speeding up. You’re running and you’ve left your soul miles behind while a chaotic harmony of sounds spin on fast forward on your iPod.
“Jump out now!” you scream to yourself. But you’re locked in! You’re panting! You’re scared. Your heart races. It’s afraid. It’s running on limited time. “Get me out!” - your war-cry to trace back your soul.
The world pauses. You pause to think. You’re now amongst the mountains. A land untouched since its creation. A place devoid of any consciousness. Silence echoes and rings in you like a chime. You hear your footsteps, every sound pressing against the mud and reverberating through your body. A gentle hum of the insects tickles your ear. You feel a chill down your spine as your soul sprints back into you from behind. You feel alive again.
You smile.
Will Gadd, an athlete, says: We’re all circling the drain everyday of our lives. That’s a given. Eat shitty food and avoid exercise and you get larger. The more you sit still, the harder it is to move The less you move, well you get the picture.
Move.
Move faster. Move against gravity’s pull and you stay further from the drain for longer.
“I’m 46 years old, a middle aged guy, a dad. Not a youth or an action figure. I do it too- get on the conveyor belt, it’s easy. But I’m way more proud of every single day I’ve spent outside with my lungs burning, chest heaving, sucking for oxygen in life, than I am at times I drank too much, slept in, squandered time by sending useless but somehow important e-mails or whatever. I hate those useless days. I never regretted working out, going for a walk or getting on a train stinking, dripping sweat, not once.
We all try being busy instead of being alive. Move information instead of simply moving. It’s hard I get it. But days spent on the couch should be a welcome anomaly, not a way of life. I figure the type of movement is less important than moving itself. An hour at the gym is just as valuable as a day in the mountains. A victory over life’s demands. Every time I slip out when the world is asleep, and run, bike or walk for a while, it’s a win. You see someone smarter once figured out, an object in motion tends to stay in motion, an object at rest tends to stay at rest. Me? I’m moving. Fight for movement. Fight for this life. Fight for it right till the moment you come to rest. Life’s more fun when you move.