Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Entropy

Unless you are one of the rare few (are there any?) who have spent their whole life training or at leisure, practicing healthy exercise without injury, you will have used your body up in some way.
Age and wear takes it's toll. Gravity is a one way street. Entropy is omnipresent.
Work - from sitting at a desk all day, or in a car, to doing the hardest manual labor, will crunch, stack, compress, twist, misalign, and repetitiviely strain your body ... and that's not including injury - tendons that never quite go back to how they were, scar tissue that restricts range of motion and blood flow, bones broken, cracked and healed ... maybe straight ... maybe crooked.

Thing is, we are all like this, it's what life IS, and it's unavoidable .... well, perhaps some of the stuff from the 'stupid' file could have been avoided, but the rest ...? We all live there. They are fact, real, normal.
So please ... stop complaining. Use what you have. Work from where you ARE not from where you would prefer to be, or some fantasy alternative that does not exist.
Can't put your feet parallel? Can't squat? Can't straighten your fingers, wiggle your toes, fold in your hips, freely rotate your joints, flex your spine evenly?
Think you 'should' be able to do all these things? Sure, but if you've never spent any time doing them, why should you be able to?
Because I can? Other people can?
Well ... I can because I practice, other people probably because they practice too.
Do I have asymmetries, aches, repetitive strain injuries, old injuries, a job that 'damages' my body? Yes.
Can I ever be 'perfect'? No.
Can I be better? Yes.

You can mitigate a bunch of the wear that your body goes through every day, heal some stuff, improve a bunch more and generally work towards your potential IF ... and it is a big IF .... you pay attention, and work at it. Regularly, every day, all the time if you are a big enough nerd and have some imagination.
You are never going to be 'perfect' (what does that mean anyway?) but you could be way better than you ever thought you would be. So stop complaining, this is what life is. Work on yourself, let go of perfection, or some fantasy of your lost youth, and start moving towards your own, real, full potential, now, in the real present.
And no ... it's never too late to start.

2 comments:

Jake said...

Beautiful. And an excellent reminder.

Anonymous said...

Everything now is old, creaky and painful but I still have GREAT hair. And my 'finger of doom' still works well enough to tut-tut the bad guys into compliance. I just like holding up a sign once in awhile on an off-ramp: "Will Whine for Pity."

:)