Everything You Know, You Learned in Kindergarten

 And haven't learned anything since.

That is unfortunately true of many people -- that the first things they learned, were also their last.  That used to be adequate for when things changed slowly, and new information took a lifetime, and even generations to finally win out.  And that same cycle, would repeat for another few millennia -- until someone created the wheel, or invented fire.  Then, everybody who had attended kindergarten, had a Ph.D.  So it is not surprising that now, people with a Ph.D., think that is all there is to know, and can be known -- and not that it is just the beginning rather than the end of their quest for useful information.

That is not more elaborate and contrived explanations on why everything goes wrong -- but are the right answers that eliminate those problems -- and humanity can move on.  That's when we realize we're on to something -- and are not hearing the same or even different excuses played over and over again -- while learning from those mistakes, are forbidden and suppressed.  And so we spend more money while the problems get worse, and explode out of control.

That's not unlike what is happening in many of our major population centers now -- as they spend increasingly more money on problems that continue to get worse, and often explode out of control -- while wishing it were otherwise.  That's not going to make it happen -- but is merely wishful-thinking -- as though there is no difference, and telling the difference, is now illegal and prohibited.  That is not unlike the cities that are being sacked by vandals and lawless -- in the hope that they will stop.

Those are the people we need to build fences against, because they don't respect our boundaries -- and further inviting their incursions, won't make them come to their senses.  We have to.  That is the unfortunate truth of life -- that some people need to be reigned in -- because they don't have that self-control, and only those who do, can transcend to ever higher levels.  That's especially important when one is "retired" and there are no others to tell them what to do.  What will a person do?

For a few, it is to indulge their lifelong dream to dissipate themselves in whatever manner possible -- in binge eating, binge drinking, binge watching, binge recklessness -- until somebody else cares enough to tell them to stop.  But they're not going to do it themselves, and for that, one has to lay down rules -- because an honor system does not work with those who are dishonorable.  Their objective is to get away with anything they can.  So one has to make this distinction -- between the honorable and the dishonorable, and not assume they are playing by the same rules.

Those are the people who have no compunction about preying on the innocent, gullible, trusting, unassuming elderly and vulnerable -- whenever they're allowed an opportunity.  Most people are not so disposed, but a few are, and that is the need for this ability to distinguish the wolf in sheep's clothing -- lying among the lambs.  That is what the good shepherds do.  That is doing one's part -- in any society one operates in.  They don't just lead the lambs to the slaughter -- ruthlessly as some would have us believe.  They've earned their place at the banquet.

Many people now do not see the connection -- between one thing and every other, and think that everything is merely arbitrary -- according to the story of the day, which everybody is beholden to copy as their own, and "edit" for greater clarity -- which often turns out to be another story entirely.  In that manner, they can claim it as an original -- as though they thought of it themselves -- but is just the story line repeated throughout every journal.  Nobody would know the original authorship -- and so much the better -- in the new improved "journalism."  Rumor is as valid as facts -- until the readership becomes weary of being misinformed and misled -- for a few clicks more.

In this manner, many promise to deliver, but never get around to it -- and send whatever they have to sell, regardless of what the customer wants, and dares them to return it.  It's not a good way of doing business -- but they got their money, and obtaining value for it, is your problem.  That is now the experience of many in the marketplace who are unwary -- but that is the risk one takes, to receive favorable exchanges -- and knows how to recognize them from the fraudulent and unscrupulous.  They sell you the sizzle, but not the satisfaction.

Fortunately, as time goes by, one needs to buy less and less -- while returning to reliable and trusted sites.  That in itself, is worth something.  Thus the rich get richer, and the fly-by-nights move onto the next scam and multi-level marketing opportunity that will soon be included in the Dow-Jones averages.  Thus the rich get richer, and the poor have no idea what they are talking about.  Everything they know, they learned in kindergarten -- and stopped learning anymore.  It never occurred to them that knowledge should work, and make a difference -- or is worthless, and not worth repeating.  But for these victims of the learning wars, repetition is all they know -- even if they are useless and futile.  They think if they simply repeat it often enough, one day it will come true -- and not that it should be obvious from the get-go, each and every time.

That's how divorced many have come from reality.  They think "virtual" knowledge is good enough, and often, as all there is.  And so the world of reality escapes them -- and they suspect nothing.  They may say that reality is anything you want to believe it is -- and give Ted talks on it -- to a proudly undiscriminating audience, who knows what they want to hear.  They are no longer "bothered" by the truth.  In that and any other universe, there are still the few who are bothered -- and know it makes a difference.  They have never been everyone, or even the majority; often, they have been only one -- who stood alone, and stood their ground -- despite all the intimidations to conform.

Those are the great individuals and ideas that have stood the test of time -- as much as the mob-mind tears that notion down.  There are no such individuals they will insist; all have caved to the popular opinion -- or suffered the boot.  At least that's what they'd like us to think.

It Doesn't Matter How Much You Know that Isn't True

 Many think that simply knowing a lot is good -- but it only matters the little one knows that is actually true that one tests and discovers for themselves.  Probably 95% of what one "knows" may not be true, and be actually harmful -- and that is why simply knowing more, may not help them, but actually hurt them -- and be the cause of all their troubles.  But they think that is all despite of what they know -- than because of what they know that isn't so, and never think to question the validity of.

That is most of the "knowledge" in the world -- and everyone's job in life, is to find out which is true, and which isn't.  Nowhere is that more apparent in one's own health and well-being.  If everything one knows is not working, there is a problem with what they know -- and not the rest of the world's perception -- of whether they are right or wrong.

One's actual results and experiences are not just "anecdotal" but the reality of their own lives.  It does not matter how many others made it across the river without being attacked by the crocodile.  For the one that is, it is a total disaster, and not just the one in a thousand of being "mostly" safe.

That is the deception of large numbers -- when all that matters, is the one actuality one experiences.  Until then, the statistic may be 90% true -- but that is not the reality for the 10% for whom it does not apply.  Theirs would be a total disaster -- or impact.  The ultimate test of anything, was what one experiences in their own test -- and nobody knows that with any certainty beforehand, and often, afterwards even.  Sometimes, what one thinks is the reason something works, is not the real reason it does -- and that is the necessity of having others do the experiment also, and then they can compare notes.

More often than not, the truth is not what one expected to find -- while some people don't care, because they will continue to believe as they do regardless of any outcome; they just want to be "right" -- regardless.  They're not interested in finding out the truth of any matter -- for themselves certainly, and for others, if they don't have answers that work.  Some will insist that nothing works -- but what they know -- even if the results are always disastrous.  It merely confirms everything they "know."

In the field of exercise -- especially in aging people -- the obvious observation is that they have a difficult time with even formerly easy movements, and seeing that, why would a sane person construct even more difficult movements for them to do -- unless they just liked the feeling of making others feel worse than they already do?  The enlightened thing to do would be to discover those movements they could do with ease and grace, and encourage that mastery as the foundation for further gains -- rather than to frustrate them from the get-go.

But many fitness instructors lack that sensitivity -- in wanting to feel superior and all-knowing -- probably for the first time in their lives -- when provided a captive audience.  It's not unlike the basketball player who will never let the others touch the ball again once it is passed to them.  It's not much fun for everybody else -- although for the one so self-absorbed, they think all the cameras are rolling, and the applause is only for their ears.  Of course such people never go very far -- except in their own minds.  In their own minds, everybody else just showed up to see them.

Likewise, it doesn't take a genius to create a movement everybody else cannot do -- or is difficult to do -- but does take a genius to discern what anyone can do -- but doesn't think to do, and because of that, is their disability and dysfunction.  The most obvious, is simply turning one's head -- as far as possible, to ensure one's safety before proceeding out into traffic.  A few will claim that they didn't -- simply because they didn't think to do so, rather than as a well-conditioned action.  That is like our basketball player who once he gets his hands on the ball, never looks around at what is happening, and others are doing -- for the easy basket.  They think making the most difficult shot, scores more points -- when it's not that way at all, and they totally misunderstand the rules of the game -- and what everybody else is trying to achieve.

It's not competition that determines who is most fit -- but Nature.  That may seem to change from time to time -- but it is really all the same adaptation to changing circumstances, and how one is well-prepared to respond to them.  That is baseline health -- and not just one isolated measure of it as though it is the whole story.  There is an even bigger fish behind it.  So rather than requiring 100 pushups at age 100, it is sufficient and more meaningful to ask, who is the best-looking person at 100? -- and dispense with further tests and measurements.  That implies health and all its other attributes.  In that condition, one is ready to go at any moment also -- at the top of their game, and not only after decades, or even a century of decline.  They simply go out on top -- whenever that happens.

The worst fate is a prolonged decline into unrecognition as a viable human being.  Way before then, one hopes to have learned a few things in life to avoid that condition and be that proverbial wiser person.  Presumably, that's what life is all about -- growing older and wiser, and not just older horribly -- and drag one's tortured body across some imaginary finish line.  We've already seen plenty of that kind of action.  Health defies aging, but is more than just the foundation for all the other accoutrements of a life well-lived.  That includes personal hygiene, dress and grooming, refined and graceful movements -- and not everything sacrificed for only one thing -- that only results in hideous disproportion.  It is the symmetry that is the whole greater than just the sum of its parts -- but all too frequently, only one part to the diminishment of all the others.

That's why older bodybuilders stand out grotesquely for that disturbing disproportion -- of only developing the biceps, while looking like they can barely hobble on destroyed or neglected hip, knees and feet.  Yet they have biceps.  More than ever, it should be apparent that symmetry and proportion is the whole point -- especially at the ages at which one should know better.  But very obviously, they don't -- and it is not a matter of having lost it, but never attaining in the first place -- and that is what makes them fit to go out on top -- whenever that is.  That is inevitable, and not like the rich people of today think, that if they have enough money, they can simply live forever -- even if it is in a perpetually declining state.  But Nature doesn't allow that to happen.  That would upset all her plans for an evolving better life -- and not simply prolonging the disabled and dysfunctional as long as possible.  There is no room for that in the grand scheme of things.

And so life goes on -- despite every attempt to impede its progress, and evolution -- and keep things as they are permanently.  That is the backdrop in which we live our individual lives -- yet think from time to time, to make a breakthrough and reset the course of humanity.  That obviously, is not simply repeating history -- from time immemorial, to whatever future they wish to control.  It is something far more powerful -- the search for reality.  That always lies beyond the known and familiar.  How it is likely to manifest is only a guess -- of putting it all together in a much greater way than envisioned previously, and even presently.

It is more likely to be the bedridden exercising in bed, and the sedentary exercising in their chairs -- than it is for all 100 year olds to finish a mandatory marathon -- no matter how late into the night they finish, and even how many die along the way.  But the prototypes already exist -- in the most universal postures of yoga from which all subsequent movements derive.  What has been lacking up to now, is the realization that those postures can be effected by a muscle contraction as well as a relaxation -- and it is the alternation of the two, that produces a pumping effect -- just as the heart moves blood throughout the heart -- and as far as there is space to do so beyond it.  

But it can't force the blood to move out of the way -- because that is not how it is designed to work.  For the circulation to be optimized -- particularly to any specific part, the muscles at the furthest extremity activated (articulated), must push the blood back towards the heart -- to create that space for the new to enter.  Lacking that critical understanding, makes that effectiveness impossible -- because the heart can't pump hard enough to push blood through miles of blood vessels.  

There has to be a motive force coming from the other side -- which uses the venal blood system to complete the circuit.  That is the most misunderstood concept in all of exercise -- the thinking that heart rate alone is sufficient in optimizing circulation.  The heart already does its part, unfailingly -- but not so much the muscles of the extremities, which contract and connect back towards the center of the body approximately at the heart.  How ingenious, and clever by design.  One couldn't have planned it any better -- but one did not have to recreate the wheel to benefit from these millions of years of evolution.  One simply has to understand it.

Then the relevant question of how one optimizes the health and circulation to the heads, hands and feet to keep them from failing becomes an easy question to answer -- and doing so activates and ensures the health of all the regions in-between -- simply because it is connected in that obvious fashion.  So the question, "How can I exercise when I can't even get out of bed?" becomes obvious, one doesn't have to get out of bed.  All one has to do is simulate the movement at the extremities beginning with the fulcrum (axis of rotation) at the neck, wrists, and ankles -- to achieve and attain most of the benefits derived from the much more demanding activities of those same articulations.

Any activity can be simulated in that way -- and doing so, enables the much more difficult version of it -- whether that is ballet, running, jumping, pushing, pulling, lifting, rowing, etc.  Those movements can be maintained in whatever condition one is in -- and understanding that, is the best exercise one can do.  Failing to do so, will require much pain, time, and effort -- without anywhere close to the same results.  That is the critical understanding necessary for movement (exercise) to be productive throughout life -- rather than mysteriously failing throughout one's life, and inevitably abandoned at the point in life at which it would be most beneficial -- if they only had that better understanding, rather than the same information that hasn't worked for anyone else.