Friday, August 24, 2007

Things that make me Happy

Time does seem to get away from me. It's something like 2:14 AM. I am happy to post right now.

I got a good email from a buddy today. He just graduated last year, and since I am treading a similar path to the one he trod last year, he gave me six great points of advice.

Thing One that I love: Good Advice

There's something excellent about advice. Well, about proper advice I guess. Some advice, like the kind you get from not-wise people isn't as good. There's a great catch though. I figure that everybody is wise in something. Rarely will you find a man that is wise in everything, but no matter what they've got something on you. I think it's reasonable to wager that everybody has some good advice they could give you. It's hard for me a lot of times to accept advice from certain people. It's nothing more than a pride factor.

But good advice, well, that's good. It makes me happy.

Thing Two that I love: Lists

I don't use lists as often as I'd like when I write. Lists have a beautiful knack for organizing and emphasizing what's important. Lists add a logical flow to everything around them. You have a bold heading. That heading is immediately important, there's no question about it. And then you have a paragraph underneath it; a rousing support for the bold-portant heading. Lists are good.

End of the list

I'm done with the list. Those are two things I love. Maybe I'll make another post in the future that details more things that I love. We'll just have to see.

I am, more than ever before, excited for school to start. There are few people that I know that have not said these same words several times. Therefore, I shall refrain from elaborating on them-

Ok, just kidding. I can't help but elaborate on them.

It's an opportunity. An opportunity to go big. Every single day there's going to be something that I can push the limits on. If there's one thing that just makes my heart sing, it's pushing the limits on a task.

"I need you to catch me a snail."

"Aha! I captured four GIANT snails, AND an Australian ground sloth. Na na na na!"

There's nothing quite like showing up with something that's been sufficiently pushed.

And that's what I want my senior year to be. I want it to be so pushed that by the time it's over, people will be wondering why nobody pushed like that before. I want to push so hard that people everywhere are gonna be like "Man, that guy pushed hard."

Yeah. There's gonna be pushing.

Over the years I've adopted various words as my theme for brief epochs of my life. Halfway through junior year it was flow. Flow has significant meaning in a lot of sports and adventures, especially Parkour, the french-born flying-around-jumping-off-park-benches-adventure-sport. While I've never participated in such a fun adventure as parkour or free running, I really like the way they've defined flow.
Flow is the flawless transition from one obstacle to the next, to the point where there might as well not be any obstacles at all.
Something about "flawless transition" is pretty smooth. I started thinking about it when I couldn't get my biscuits down in Ultimate. I had been able to do them before, but once the group of us had refined the throw and given it rules, I couldn't ever complete it. I tried and tried, and couldn't make it happen.

The breakthrough came one day. I was rushing the arm motion and botching the release. I was too focused. Once i relaxed and let my body move naturally and slowly, the way that it wanted to, I could throw tons better.

I had been trying to throw an abrupt biscuit. Flow is the opposite of abrupt. Instead of breaking a mechanical biscuit, I could now "flow" a beautiful biscuit right out the window where I wanted it.

That wasn't all that flow did though. As soon as it was thrown, flow wanted to run to where I need to be to get the next pass. Flow was never ceasing. It was never abrupt, but always moving to where it needed to be next. Flawless transition.

And so gradually flow spread from Ultimate to normal life. Instead of breaking chemistry, pausing, and then breaking history, I could flow through chemistry the way it ought to be flown through, and then without stopping flow through history. I strove for a flawless transition between obstacles. Don't stop running.

And so flow was the word of the day for many days.

One day flow stopped being the word of the day. I'm not sure how it happened, but it did. I still have a great love for flow, but it, quite simply, is not the word of the day.

I believe that I've found a new word of the day.

Push.

Push: -verb. The act of exerting effort in the hopes of exceeding expectations, esp. by use of boundless courage, creativity, determination, mad skillz, or the like. To boldly be, think, do, and produce something new and better than ever before.

Yeah, I think it's a pretty good word of the day. I remember doing it a few times last year, that pushing business. I plan on doing it again. Senior Year offers me a great opportunity to push.

It's old and trite, but I learned it from a good man. "Go big or go home."

That's what it all comes down to. Maybe the most important thing that PLC ever taught me. If we're going to do something, we might as well do it better than it's ever been done before. Otherwise we're just wasting time.

Thing Three that I love: The chance to Push.

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