Archive for July 10th, 2008
getting from point a to point b
July 10th, 2008. Published under reflection. Comments.
Going places. And getting from you are to where you want to be. Or looking back at where you came from to where you are now. Funny how one bit of information in life leads to another, and how paying attention to its essence opens up other possibilities.
Parkour
I have been thinking about some father-kid things that would be fun to do together. Something cool. Something where their friends might say, “Wow, you’re dad is cool!” And, I came across parkour. My youngest two kids practice martial arts and are already quite athletic. This could be something fun to practice and play together. Though that’s not as important as some of the principles I uncovered when I was investigating it.
Parkour seems to be about getting from point a to point b in the most efficient way possible. There’s a lot of room for creativity. It’s not a competitive sport, nor one to “put on display”. It’s probably not even right to call it a sport. It’s a way of being where the entire world around you becomes a playground. Everything changes when you’re walking around town and you ask yourself, “how could I get from here to that fire escape 3 stories up?” There might be a hedge, a car, a spiral staircase, a 6′ gap and a throng of middle school kids in your way; though you say to yourself, “with the proper training, I could get there in 20 seconds or less.”
That seems silly, yet the state of mind you can get into where your physicality and creativity thrive on one another for the pure enjoyment of play and improvisation can be quite amazing. From Chau Belle Dinh:
It is when you trust yourself, earn an energy. A better knowledge of your body, be able to move, to overcome obstacles in real world, or in virtual world, thing of life. Everything that touch you in the head, everything that touch in your heart. Everything touching you physically.
Gas Prices
And then I happened upon a post by a engineer who has a great blog about design and programming. His post about getting from point A to point B focuses on how we have certainly have reached the tipping point in fuel prices where the market is correcting itself of its excesses over the past 30 years. We are seriously going to have to think about how better to get from here to there. And why we are so far from all the there’s we want to get to. And that not going there and instead hanging out here can be better and maybe, just maybe communities can be built again where people live. Even people in rural areas are starting to carpool!
As painful as it is to know it costs me $25 a round-trip right now to commute to my office, I have already started to shift how I move about from here to there. I don’t go there as often. I stay here to work. I combine trips outside the house… pet store, library, grocery store, etc.; a little planning starts to save more than just a few pennies.
An Emotional Scale
Wanting to be excited, jazzed, proud, in love, loved or delighted doesn’t do much if all you do is want it. Knowing where you are in your emotion is key to then knowing how to get where you want to be. Since emotions are such an incredible gauge on their own, you can tell a lot about yourself where your thinking and feeling are (or are not) in alignment. It’s easy enough to let yourself get knocked down a notch or two when people around you are taking shots at you. Yet if you’re the one choosing your reactions around you, why would you want to do this?
Everything Together
If you don’t know how to even start to get to point B, it’s not such a big deal. Better to put a foot forward than to stand dormant in your own doubt.
I’m listening to my own words here, “Take time to feel where you are… and look for confirmation in your environment.” It goes back to relaxing your heart and letting yourself feel. Feel your own emotions. Feel the movement in thought and word around you. To get where you want to go takes creativity. And we all have it. Trust in your own ability to make the creative choices that will get you there.
Do you have any stories about how you got from point A to point B with or without the help of the universe?
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