Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Movement is Change

What ultimately makes anyone fit, is their ability to change -- or adapt to the actual requirements of any challenge -- rather than to stay the same throughout their entire lives, which many think is remaining young, immature and steadfast -- all one's life.

That does not make one highly adaptable though they may be ideally suited for one set of circumstances -- but when those circumstances, conditions and environment change, they cannot change to adapt to it and perish, or likely are greatly compromised and dysfunctional -- because their perfect adaptation to only one set of conditions, doesn't allow for any flexibility to change for another.  We see that all around us, all the time -- when people respond in the way they have been conditioned to, even though the realities, that require their urgent, timely and fit(ting) responses, are something other than what they think they are, or may not think at all about them.

The presumption is that one should be that one way -- all the time, every time -- though the requirements for appropriate action, may be other than what that individual is prepared to deliver each and every time, at every moment in their lives.  Such people often wonder, why is it that I am doing everything I can do, yet there is no favorable result?  Simply doing anything, is very seldom likely to be the right thing, which is what one must determine before doing anything.

Yet those who like the sound of their own words, regardless of whether what they say has any meaning or relevance, will think they have said something of great wisdom and significance -- feeling quite satisfied, that anything is better than nothing.  But the wise person knows, those who talk do not know, and those who know, do not talk -- unless they actually have to.  For silence, they know, is a mind inquiring to find out what it does not know -- while the chattering mind, does not want to know it doesn't know, and does not know how to find out.

That is the importance of a quiet mind and body -- ceasing effort, and in that state, taking in the new information, rather than the continuation of thought and action that may have long ceased to be timely and appropriate.  That is the importance of non-action, or the principle of wu-wei.  It is the rest between the heart beat.  It is as important as the action.

So it is important not just to be one-way all the time -- but one state or condition, gives meaning to the other.  Thus one's conditioning for the ultimate survival -- which is life itself -- is learning the maximum effort (peak contraction), but also as importantly, the fullest relaxation of those muscles which produce movement by their alternation.  Such conditioning, would prepare one for all the responses one might conceivably have to make -- and not just the one movement (treadmill) that is neither the greatest contraction or relaxation, but only constant, unvarying busyness -- regardless of what is happening.

Of course such conditioning, has very little value to a person with a wide range of interests and activities in their daily lives, let alone for the extraordinary demands of life in the balance -- requiring that one do what one has never done before, or even imagined they could (would have to).  One often witnesses this total relaxation, just preparatory to a world record attempt -- but that was the requirement, for that supreme effort to be achieved.

Most just won't notice it.

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