Shit Humans Do

I went home home for the first time in a long time this weekend. The air is cleaner there. Time passes slowly. A day at home working on a paper, and a day in the bush visiting some of my old parkour haunts, and did many things I've never done before - and got many cuts and bruises where I hadn't before. Practiced precisions, vaults, flicks, climbing. Practiced alternating speeds, changing direction and keeping eyes ahead while moving on uneven/rocky ground. Practiced sneaking up on tourists.

It was also a good time to think.

Thought about parkour, the independent individual nature of it in a dependent social world. "When you go all the way, you will be alone..." but how often are you alone anymore? (How often do you go all the way anymore?) Traceurs aim for a mastery of themselves, because they understand that's all they can control. But not even that... digestion, nerves, even cancer - are beyond conscious control; whilst good executives and politicians understand well how to control people. We do it everyday, from advice and complaints, to cues in body language and tone of voice. Is it a balance thing, between self and society? A traceur trains to be altruistic, but by being completely independent how can you help others? So do you divide your time between one and the other, one part to be strong, the other to be useful?

Are humans too complicated animals to be able to satisfy themselves with just one mastery?
Is the world too complicated to allow survival of specialists, or too strong to allow survival of generalists? Or maybe we are just drawing arbitrary lines to decide where walking becomes running becomes fighting becomes love-making becomes philosophy, and there are no real differences between them- its all just shit humans do.

I don't know.

Because although they're the same nerves and the same muscles, each has a different mindset and a different objective. I've been told many times that I can't have everything. I don't think I understand why yet. Maturity, I guess.

(NB: Don't you find it interesting how its always kids who have the best dreams? I remember when I was in year 1, and a teacher asked 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' Everyone said doctors ("Because I want to help people!" - I remember that) and astronauts and footy stars and now I see people my age with scars on their wrists flipping burgers or stacking shelves from 9-to-5 and I'm just...what happened?)