Hiking made me understand some of my deepest, most primal urges which I have not understood for the 25 years of my life. These deep urges, beckoning me from beyond the realms of ancestry, have been clashing. Clashing against the hoard of amalgamated social constructs: artificial triviality like modern day notifications, pinging, alerting and depraving. These primal urges, our deepest warning systems are so powerful that despite 25 years of social conditioning largely with over-information, rapidly evolving technology and the mindless, scaling wave of capitalism, will still stir constantly within our day to day lives. I’ve found this urge to be manifested in the forms of ‘micro-long depression’. We are permanently a little bit anxious, permanently a bit depressed. Humans, alone, unfortunately are weak and we cannot hold our mere shields against the wave of society’s onslaught. Therefore, we must unlearn. We must sharpen our natural bones and get in touch with our innate biology.
Generally, we feel these moments when we relax, however we do. I do believe most of the popular forms of relaxation are still just ‘escapes’ which have embodiments of our primal necessities. Digital entertainment, going to the gym, social media, driving, taking something are some. For me, practicing traditional martial arts, devoid of the ‘Gladiator’ like combats to procure capitalism through bloodthirst, (with a small percentage engaging within the names of technical appreciation or respect), I have come to appreciate its much of its essence within its ‘way of life’; ‘enlightenment’ through neutrality and acceptance of life as the way it is. Thankfully, my hiking of the Swiss Alps has helped me reinvigorate my inherent search within my life.
The Alps and even Mount Vesuvius in Pompeii, Italy, have taught me or to better word it, powerfully presented to me effortlessly: a much more primal life. Time passed slowly, but not in the way we are used to when we are bored. Time passed at a speed my deep biological clock understood. Hiking made me feel like I was going back to the deepest roots of my ancestry, organically and in a primitive sense, formed. The days I hiked, I felt a strong urge to sleep when the sun set. Yes, a drink of cold water from the bottle I carried all day felt like one of the greatest things ever. And most importantly, that the present was all that mattered. Other than the motions of the sun, the moon, the wind, the trees, grass and the occasional animals or other hikers, nothing else mattered and nothing else came up in the mind (Horvat, Nikola, 2020). I felt the level of synchronicity in perception of life matters like that of an animal. The only things I feared truly were that of falling off a cliff, thirst, starvation or the feel of sheer cold weather against my body. I felt a deep, low but subtle hum of desychronisation throughout day to day life in urban Sydney, Australia: sometimes life was way too fast. Sometimes it was too slow. Sometimes I felt I had the power to change it, sometimes I felt I had to change it or else. And I whacked myself with a stick metaphorically, “you need more discipline, you need more discipline.” Which is still true, but where I am getting at is, everything in moderation. I’m not asking to reinvent the wheel. So what now?
The more you know, the less you know. At this stage, all I can say is I will try to grab the full completedness of life more than I have. Get out more into the wild. This sense of absolute inner peace as well as an outer peace (collective group sense of humanity) is something I wish to seek more through martial arts training, yoga and hiking. For those who are stuck deep (I guess we are all really stuck deep though to some extent) within the grips of capitalism, whether you have mortgages, bills, kids… martial arts, particularly traditional martial arts with emphasis on culture, respect and initial ‘rigidity’ in structure, has granted me an opportunity to experience that more “sincere version of myself,” (Horvat, Nikola, 2020) sincere to my lineage of humankind and to my own soul. To be able to let go more... Thanks
to hiking and Horvat’s anecdotes, I have now been able to manifest this phenomenon into better cohesion and hopefully now into day to day application and long term sustainability.
P.S. An interesting double-edged sword, irony and the inevitable “reaction” to this beautiful “action”/learning is that I can only attribute my introspection and subsequent manifestation of coherent (I hope) writing to the social construct; formal and bureaucratic education. Life is always a balancing act, hey.
Comments