Potentially Human
Personally, as a creature I like to jump. The agility of a young buck compels
the soul to hurl the body into the mountainous regions of nature, so as to
rustle with the trees, sprawl with the grass, and sing with the birds. Gliding
the body up and down countless rocks and roots, my feet the navigator. In
the ocean I’m found sliding though the water. Currents swaying my every
molecule, but with what technique and determination I move my body in the
direction I so please. Once the blood is thoroughly flowing through the
veins, I’m agile as a gazelle.
There are two aunts of mine, my father’s only sisters. They are both terribly
obese. Both would be categorized with the 6% of Americans who are
“extremely obese”, opposed to the 34% of Americans who are simply obese.
In 2009, 63.1% of adults in America
were either overweight or obese. Bound for the same path, around twelve
years ago my father stopped eating meat, and took up exercise. He is now
able to hike miles of mountains and walk streets for numerous hours without
halt. In conversation, the sisters insist to the brother that it is too
late for them to be fit; their naïve ignorance extinguishes hopes of any form
of exercise.
Exercise is a necessary part of our lives that was lost somewhere in our
understandings as a society, over shadowed by corporate profit and
technological conveniences.
Primitive man needed to be
physically fit, as he would be able to spend two days on trips up to 20 miles
on foot in order to hunt and gather for their people. When I discuss the
matters of gathering women with my comrades, we often refer to the experience
as hunting. We metaphorically ‘hunt’ the women, and it is indirectly to
our benefit if we maintain a healthy, physically fit profile. In that
sense, hunting has played an uncannily similar role on the human male physiology
from the dawn of man to the present day.
To say that exercise seems
unnecessary in today’s society could be an understatement. Today, one
could choose to spend the entirety of their free time in a vegetative state,
absorbed in the monitor of their television or computer. Kindergarteners
around the world are already being taught and entertained on devices that
require the maximum movement of a hand wave. From couch or office
chair one can bee-line directly to their vehicle to migrate to the next sitting
spot. People have adapted to seeing exercise as a burden, even a tiring
waste of time. Despite how it may seem, exercise is, as it has always been,
chief in importance to our health and well-being. There is an ancient Greek
saying, “Exercise for the body and music for the soul”.
Perhaps it is one who is blessed,
or likely just more aware, to see that the body daily contains far more energy
than one would know what to do with. Moreover, this supply is replenished after
each night, and one could feel as if it’s been wasted if not wholly used for a
day. When I find circumstance to expel a majority of my energy stores, my
mind thereafter is calmer and clearer than it could have possibly been
otherwise. Remaining is an exhausted body, lounging as the versatile
instrument of the mind.
This past Sunday I awoke at dawn,
and with my father went to the gym. I exerted myself and whole fully
broke a sweat. In the afternoon, we went for a casual hike, as we usually
do on Sundays. The day was beautiful, and a steep one mile incline wraps
into another mile of zigzag descents. Around 4 pm I met with my
best of friends, and we found ourselves at Kaimana beach ready to swim out to
the wind-flag which is post out at 200 meters from shore. After that swim
I certainly could say that I was exhausted, but my mind was extraordinarily
refreshed. The mellow disposition of my body left my mind very relaxed,
suddenly enjoying the temperate air and the environments of Hawaii far more than usual. For dinner
I departed from home, half-jokingly telling my dad that I’m going female
hunting. Sitting alone and seriously enjoying the elaborate atmosphere at
a spot called Rum Fire, my beer and burger arrive. Smiles grace my face
and not a worry was on my mind. The spot was calming to the senses, and I
happen to see other fellows who are also sitting alone and making it painfully
obvious that they are hunting female. Suddenly a group of three attractive
Japanese females on the table next to me make a sort of beastly sound to get my
attention. I look and see three smiles reflecting my own. The leader of
this pack gestured for me to join them, and suddenly my burger and I were
enveloped in a very positive experience. This calm frame of mind, which
welcomed the females to subsequently hunt me, I owe entirely to the extensive
exercise that I did earlier that day.
At a cellular level inside of our
brains, exercise has been proven by scientists to be one of the only ways to
create new neurons, protect existing neurons and promote the signal
transmission between neurons, which is considered the basis of memory and
learning. This means that it certainly is more than just a feeling that
came over me after a full day of exercise, my mind had developed more neurons.
It is quite a curiosity that such profound and established research would not
be wide spread and advertised, as much as, say, Mc Donald’s twenty piece
chicken mc nuggets for five dollars. I could almost venture to guess that
the pharmaceutical companies and the fast food companies go hand in hand along
with the government to make an awesome profit from the growing unhealthiness of
the country, but I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist.
I’ve found that my induction of swimming, hiking, and running, as regular
hobbies was not the easiest thing to grasp at first, given their vigorous
connotations. Though it was after successions of these exhausting experiences
did I naturally understand that not only was I physically becoming healthier, I
was discovering new states of mind. Children need to be taught these
things at a young age, so they may stand better chance to live their body and
mind to its’ full potential. What with all the incredible advances in
technology allowing a child to hold the world of knowledge in one hand and an
ice cream in the other, it seems that chance is only getting slimmer.
Bibliography
You fricking kid, you! How come we never knew you wrote so well, hunh? This was excellent. As an obese woman myself, I use food as others would use a drug. The problem with that is food is legal.
ReplyDeleteDang, Roland, I never knew you wrote so well! That's awesome!